(FORTUNE Magazine) – In France, a business deal used to mean an excuse for old classmates from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (the training ground for elite bureaucrats and CEOs) to get together over a four-course meal and a couple of bottles of fine Bordeaux, all under the watchful eye of the government. Rather than overhauling their way of doing business, the French were content to sit back, nibble their foie gras, and gesticulate dismissively at the barbarian ways of the Anglo-Saxons.

So how do you explain what's happened in the past month or two? Banque Nationale de Paris launched a $37 billion hostile takeover bid for its rivals Societe Generale and Paribas, aiming to create the world's biggest bank. Renault bought 36.8% of Nissan. Vivendi paid $6.2 billion for U.S. Filter Corp. and is now the world's largest water company. And in a most entertaining escapade, Bernard Arnault, president of French luxury giant LVMH, has been waging a very public battle for Gucci that shows no sign of ending soon.

It's easy (and fun) to ridicule a country that has so many demonstrations in its capital city each day that the newspapers run a list of them right next to the weather--a country where even the unemployed go on strike. But France may actually be changing. "We know that we have to adapt to globalization," says Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the socialist finance minister. "That is French pragmatism." "Pragmatism" and "French" may not be words you see together often, but France is clearly doing something right: The country's 3.2% GDP growth last year outpaced that of every G-7 nation except the U.S., while inflation was below 1%.

Still, it's not clear what the lasting effects of France's March madness will be. The megamerger proposed by BNP would not, for example, be accompanied by brand consolidation, layoffs, or any of the other heartless measures usually required to make a merger pay off. And the French companies racing to acquire one another to survive in the post-euro world might do well to heed the lesson of Asterix and Obelix Against Caesar, France's movie event of the year. At $48 million, it's the most expensive French-language movie ever made. It's chock full of big-name stars and special effects--and it's...how you say?...merde. Even French critics who were desperately hoping for a film that could beat Hollywood at its own game had to admit it's almost unwatchable. So as Paris takes a stab at becoming Wall Street on the Seine, the French would do well to remember that there's more to succeeding in the global economy than spending money.

--Anne Faircloth

ANNE FAIRCLOTH is a freelance writer living in Paris.