Harry Macklowe’s French girlfriend breaks her silence

The French squeeze of mega-city developer Harry Macklowe insists that her love for the lusty long-in-the-tooth Lothario is the real deal.

“I am not a French kept girlfriend,” Patricia Landeau, 62, told The Post on Tuesday in her first public interview about her four-year relationship with Macklowe, 80.

Landeau spoke on the eve of the opening of her billionaire beau’s divorce trial from his wife of nearly 60 years, Guggenheim Foundation trustee Linda Macklowe.

The Post’s Page Six broke news of the power-couple’s split in June 2016.

Sources said Macklowe kept his mistress in a secret Park Avenue apartment — just blocks away from his marital residence at The Plaza — for two years before asking his wife for a divorce.

But Landeau said she resents her portrayal as just his much-younger mistress.

She noted that she is the current president of the French Friends of Israel Museum, comes from a background of “substantial” wealth and is still married though separated from her second husband, a prominent French American banker.

She also had a distinguished career in fashion, starting with Giorgio Armani and ending as a marketing specialist for Karl Lagerfeld, she said.

The happy couple, who plan to marry as soon as Macklowe’s divorce is finalized, spoke from the 21st floor of his General Motors Building, which rises above Apple’s glass-cube flagship store and overlooks Central Park.

His real-estate holdings include the 1,396-foot residential tower at 432 Park Ave. The Macklowe real-estate empire and he and Linda’s museum-quality art collection are at the heart of their divorce case. The trial is expected to stretch into 2018 in what presiding Judge Laura Drager predicted is “not going to be a pleasant experience.”

Macklowe is worth a reported $2 billion and said in April that he offered his estranged wife half his fortune to get lost so that he could marry Landeau.

At the time, he launched into an impromptu comedy set outside a Manhattan courtroom, telling reporters a string of “Take my wife — please”-style jokes.

On Tuesday, he was also in a lighthearted mood, gushing that Landeau taught him how to smile.

“I have a lilt,” he said. “I’m getting a divorce because my life with my ex-wife was not a happy one.”

He then told a joke about a man who is going to visit his parents’ grave: “I went to pay respects to my parents’ grave. When I walked down the cemetery path, a man was on his knees [at another grave], bending forward, crying, ‘Oh, why did you die?’ I said a solemn prayer at my parents’ grave, and when I returned, he was still on his knees, [wailing], “Oh why did you die?” I said, You must be very bereaved. Who died?’ He said, ‘I’ve never met him. He was my wife’s first husband.’ ”

Landeau chuckled and said, “Oh, Harry!”

For her part Landeau described their romance to a Claude Lelouch film.

“I’m living in your movie,” she said she told the legendary director at a screening of his love story “Un homme et une femme” at New York’s French Institute in March.

Linda Macklowe declined an interview request, but she has previously said her soon-to-be ex-husband never offered her $1 billion.

“I have not seen that offer nor anything like it. If that is the offer, I will take it and we will be done tomorrow,” she said in June.

The Macklowes and Landeau are all expected to testify. There is no prenuptial agreement.