PARIS — As the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn comes to a close on Friday, some here are breathing a sigh of relief after cringing, gasping and giggling uncomfortably for weeks while the sexual proclivities of the man once thought likely to become France’s president were paraded before the world.
Others lamented the ending of a case that had shined a rare spotlight on a chauvinistic culture where highflying, powerful men can misbehave with impunity.
Though it is widely expected that Mr. Strauss-Kahn will be acquitted — the prosecutor himself requested this week that pimping charges against him be dropped — the case is nevertheless seen as having crossed a threshold in a country where the privacy of public figures has long been considered sacrosanct. After weeks in which Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s self-described “rough” sexuality was dissected in the courtroom and cafes across the nation, a taboo has been broken, some argued, that may now make the personal life of almost any politician fair game.
“With DSK, we have entered a new phase,” Michel Taubmann, a biographer of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, said, citing the May 2011 episode at a Sofitel hotel in New York, where the former head of the International Monetary Fund was accused of assaulting a housekeeper, as the starting point.
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In the case of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the interest in his private life was ultimately more than just an appetite for prurient spectacle, those who have followed the trial closely said.
It was not the bacchanalian scenes of libertinage pored over in a Lille courtroom that appeared to offend French sensibilities, but rather the lack of judgment and recklessness of a powerful man, who believed that he was invincible.
“His was a huge downfall,” said Mr. Taubmann, the biographer. “A man who was once on the cover of Newsweek for saving the international financial system found himself, first in Rikers, and now in a Lille court, alongside a pimp. Can he be a new man, a better man? Anything is possible.”
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the actress who has been linked romantically with President François Hollande of France. she is Julie Gayet, not Juliet.
