And this weekend Saint-Germain will be dealt its biggest blow yet when its oldest bookshop Le Divan closes its doors for the last time

And this weekend Saint-Germain will be dealt its biggest blow yet when its oldest bookshop, Le Divan, closes its doors for the last time. Established in 1921, Le Divan soon became a myth in its own right as the place for writers and philosophers to buy their books. It is likely to be replaced by a Christian Dior boutique.The angst attached to to the area’s demise is accentuated by the fact that no other part of Paris has replaced it as home to a vibrant cultural life. Philosophy has always been a subject close to French hearts and amateur philosophers still gather for discussions at Le Cafe des Phares on the Place de la Bastille on Sunday mornings. The days have long when French writers and philosophers could set most of the developed world alight, but that does diminish the fierce pride in its informal shrines, with which Saint-Germain was once littered.The district was the cultural centre of the world in the late Forties. Juliette Greco could oust General de Gaulle from the front pages of newspapers the day after he had given an important speech.

Sartre and de Beauvoir scribbled away in the area’s cafes, principally the Flore, and Existentialism floated magically in the air.”De Beauvoir and Sartre were at the Flore every day,” remembers interior designer Andree Putman, who has lived at Saint-Germain-des-Pres all her life “Very often Albert Camus would come by. There was always Antonin Artaud on his own and almost every day Giacometti and his wife Annette would pop in.”Putman believes the rot set in around the mid Sixties. Now Juliette Greco remains the only survivor from the golden era. Politicians and editors may still lunch at the legendary Brasserie Lipp a few doors down from the new Armani shop, but you are more likely to encounter tourists than theoreticians in the area’s cafes. “Now there are people who make nice pullovers in the Flore rather than writers like Artaud or Samuel Beckett,” laments Putman. Indeed, the only writer who now holds court there is the supermarket philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy – a sort of French thinking woman’s crumpet, whose crisp white shirts are unbuttoned to his navel even in winter.Several of thee large publishing houses which traditionally drew literati to the area have recently decamped, driven out by the ever-increasing rents. “Saint-Germain has now become an area for people with money rather than intellectuals,” says Jean Noel Flammarion, director of the area’s most famous bookstore La Hune “It’s dead It’s artificial.

It’s finished,” says Dina Vierny who set up an art gallery there in 1947. “What have clothes shops got to do with art and philosophy?”Rumours abound that Flammarion has sold La Hune to either Chanel or Hermes. The other remaining bookshop, L’Ecume des Pages, has also been bombarded by offers from fashion houses, but both claim they have no intention of selling out for the time being. “We want to stay here,” says the manager of L’Ecume des Pages, Marie-Severine Micalleff, “and we will fight to stay.” The cafe Les Deux Magots has also attracted the attention of clothing stores and even a florist, but its director, Jacques Mathivat, is also defiant: “We have no intention of leaving. Les Deux Magots is not for sale at the moment.”Few are enthusiastic about the future of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, but most try to face it with a certain amount of optimism. “The invasion of boutiques will greatly damage the idealism of the area,” says Putman, “but big publishing houses like Gallimard are still here and are not going to move. They still have a very strong influence.” Marie-Severine Micalleff agrees: “There will always be a place for culture.

People will always meet in bookshops or cafes to talk about something other than the latest Cartier watch”. Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth Star Trek movie, and the first (wisely) to dispense entirely with the original crew. It’s got the same old heart, though – it’s still all peace, love and understanding in the 24th century. As with all the best episodes of the television series, the picture benefits from a careful balance between spirited humour and a flirtation with darkness. And most of the comedy continues to emanate from the disjunction between humanity and science, once embodied by the brittle exchanges of Kirk and Spock, but now lent a shade more complexity in the lovingly observed relationship maintained by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the evolving android Data (Brent Spiner). But while the series’ idealistic sloganeering continues to ring out in space, there have been other changes. For the first time, a Star Trek movie actually looks like something more ambitious than an extended TV show.
Not everything has changed for the better.

The first 30 minutes are, as always, packed with blandly presented exposition – we’re talking time- travel back to earth for half the Enterprise’s crew, where they must ensure the survival of Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell), the man who is destined to create warp-speed space travel and thus alert beings from another world of humanity’s intelligence, bringing about first contact: that is, the first meeting between humans and extraterrestrials, a union destined to bring peace to the universe.Got all that? Good, because it’s only the sub-plot. The main battle in the film is between Captain Picard and the Borg, the lobotomising collective who eradicate individuality in the name of efficiency and universal dominance – you know, that Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing. But Picard is wrestling some inner, as well as outer, demons which threaten to colour his faultless judgement.In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture fancied itself an agile competitor to Star Wars, but proved to be nothing of the sort. Since then, lessons have been learnt, and a lot of the early film’s pomposity has been jettisoned. But First Contact is the only Star Trek movie to really earn its place on the cinema screen. There are times when you can see the director Jonathan Frakes (who also stars as Commander William Riker) cautiously following in other film-makers’ footsteps: the set design recalls Aliens, the opening shot Brazil; the costumes indicate that the crew’s enemies, the Borg, may actually be second cousins to the Terminator; and the theme – the impossibility of existing without human emotions – was handled with comparable sentimentality in Terminator 2.And yet these influences don’t render the picture derivative.