As a nuclear carrier, however, the French could use either order. Placing the island forward of the elevator allows two major advantages. First, the elevator is better positioned to the forward catapult and end of the landing area, while also giving a better ability to access aircraft in the middle of the hangar. In particular, you can take aircraft off of the forward elevator and line them up behind the jet blast deflector while an aircraft is preparing for takeoff, increasing the sortie generation rate, though this does depend on when and where the French arm their aircraft. If the elevator was ahead of the island, it would be about at the forward end of the hangar, making it more difficult to access some aircraft about halfway between the elevators (where the fire curtain cuts the hangar into two bays) and it would be more difficult to move aircraft to the forward catapult/from the end of the landing run, but you would have better access to the forward parking area.

I posted below, but like the US, the French do not arm their aircraft in the hangars - that's bad for a lot of reasons, to include risk of fires/explosions closer to the magazine versus being contained on the flight deck.

You don't start jets in the hangar and move them up to the flight deck on elevator runs either - it's extremely disruptive to the deck and it delays the launch cycle as well.

You spot the deck for launch - once you call the start, you get taxied in position for launches and get expeditiously blasted off so you don't waste time getting to the recovery. Again, elevator runs would disrupt the deck and slow/delay recovery ops

Deck space for lining aircraft up on the catapults + parking out of the landing area is THE driving factor for tower placement, and this is why the Forrestal class (which had a relatively forward placed tower) island placement was not replicated in the Kitty Hawk class or Enterprise (which moved the island back). The Nimitz class shared a similar position to the Kitty Hawk's and Enterprise - while the Ford's most notable deck improvement is moving the island even further aft and making it much smaller

Look at the Midway in a position for launch - you want the catapult paths clear, which means aircraft are aft and in a position to line up for launch.

This photo is obviously for a photo op, but you'd want to recover aircraft and move em forward to keep a steady stream of aircraft recovering post launch

Conveniently, launching aircraft clears deck space to recover the previous wave

Here's a photo of a Nimitz class - no elevator runs here. You start up in your spot on the deck and get taxi'd to a catapult for launch

Another example here

It's all about having space to get to the catapults - the elevators in the up position do provide that, but running elevators up and down isn't a factor.