PARIS, France — They were just playfighting.

That was French President Emmanuel Macron 's explanation Monday for video images that appeared to show his wife, Brigitte , pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia this weekend.

The moment quickly made headlines in France, with media trying to decipher the interaction that cameras spotted through the just-opened door of the plane. The headline of a story on the website of the daily Le Parisien newspaper asked: “Slap or ‘squabble’? The images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam trigger a lot of comment.”

Macron later told reporters that the couple — married since 2007 after meeting at the high school where he was a student

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