I am not saying it necessarily applies to this case, but France, like all countries in the EU, does not have actual freedom of speech.
That won't help you if you don't read french, but you can see here that while the "Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" from 1789 has a concept somehow similar to "freedom of speech", a lot of exceptions have been created since then.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9_d%27expression#En...
In practice you're correct that France doesn't have what US citizen mean by "freedom of speech". Though that becomes messy because the literal translation of the expression actually exists in the law, but with a different meaning.
One thing I am familiar with is the European Convention on Human Rights which grants Freedom of speech in Article 10 and which is binding in France.
Edit: There is no state in the world where there exists some sort of "absolute freedom of speech".
Freedom of expression/freedom of speech is guaranteed in some way in all Western nations, the difference – as you correctly point out – is the degree to which other rights are also taken into account when applying the Right to freedom of speech. But that's an extremely important distinction and it cannot be said that France doesn't have Freedom of speech.