A brief moment between French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, has set the internet ablaze. As the couple disembarked from a plane in Hanoi on May 25, footage appeared to show Brigitte lightly “slapping” Macron’s face. The clip quickly went viral, prompting both body language and lip-reading experts to weigh in.

According to a lip reader, Brigitte muttered “Dégage, espèce de loser” (“Stay away, you loser”), while Macron allegedly responded with “Essayons, s’il te plaît” (“Let’s try, please?”), to which she said, simply, “Non.”

Despite the drama, Macron insists it was all harmless fun. “We were horsing around,” he told reporters, dismissing the uproar as overblown. The Élysée echoed that sentiment, calling it a moment of “complicity” between the couple.

Still, many online remain captivated—not just by the alleged slap, but by the decades-old story of how they met: Brigitte was his high school teacher, 24 years his senior. He was 15. They married in 2007.

Whether playful tease or public spat, the moment has once again spotlighted the Macrons’ unique relationship—and the internet can’t look away.