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New York Sun, Feature >>
LUNCH AT THE FOUR SEASONS
A Woman at Home in Many Worlds
By PRANAY GUPTE
Special to the Sun
Arielle Dombasle, star of the French cinema and a celebrated Parisian singer, likes to come to her native America from her home in France to do benefits for underprivileged children.
"That, perhaps more than anything else, gives me great satisfaction," she said the other day during a quick visit to New York. "I like touching the heart with a language of its own- music."
The latest of her music is captured in an album titled "Amor Amor," re leased by Wrasse Records. A collec tion of Mexican boleros and Latin- edged classics, it has just hit stores in America, and is reported to be selling well. In a recent review, the Times of London characterized Ms. Dom- basle's work as "a quirkily romantic, self-consciously retro set of Latin tunes and lounge ballads the sort of thing Dean Martin might have served up on a visit to Batista-era Havana."
The nostalgia in "Amor Amor" con veys Ms. Dombasle's powerful sense of her own past, which has been played out in several countries, start ing with America, the country of her citizenship.
She was born in the Connecticut community of Norwich to a prosperous silk manufacturer, Jean Louis Sonnery de Fromental, and his wife, Francion Garreau Dombasle. The parents took Arielle and her brother, Gilberto, to Mexico, not the least because their ma ternal grandfather, Maurice Garreau Dombasle, was France's ambassador to that country. Dombasle was a confi dante of Charles de Gaulle.
Ms. Dombasle's mother died when Arielle was 11.
"It took me nearly 15 years to get past my mother's death, to be reborn," Ms. Dombasle said. "To this day, I real ize how vulnerable we all are but especially little children who lose parent."
It was her grandmother, Manha Dombasle, a Bohemian figure who translated the literary works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore of India into French from English, who raised Arielle. To honor her mother, she later decided to adopt "Dombasle" as her last name, and not the conventional pa ternal family name of "Sonnery de Fro- mental."
"I feel that my mother has been rein carnated through her name. I want her to live through me," Ms. Dombasle said. While she keenly felt the absence of her mother, young Arielle immersed herself in Mexico's culture. Her father had accumulated a large collection of pre-Columbian art, and he also encour aged his daughter to visit museums and historical institutions.
"I was raised by criadas servants who were intensively lovable," Ms. Dombasle said. "I absorbed Mexican songs and street Spanish from the cri adas. I experienced for myself the pain and anguish of the working poor."
Their melancholy was to eventually find space in Ms. Dombasle's creative work on stage in France. She said that she became enamored of the artistic life while still a child.
"I knew in my mind that I was going to perform on stage," Ms. Dombasle said.
She got opportunities to perform in shows put on at her school. "Being on stage was the most impor tant thing of the year for me. It gave me an early sense of how dramatic my life was going to be," Ms. Dombasle said.
She went to Paris when she turned 18 to enroll at the prestigious Conser vatoire de Musique de Paris. She trained in opera, but also in theater. Soon, Ms. Dombasle was performing on stage, and also cutting best-selling records.
She gained movie stardom in Eric Rohmer's 1983 film "Pauline at the Beach." Later, she played the lead in "The Blue Villa," a psycho-sexual dra ma made by iconoclastic filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet a role that won her much acclaim and many awards. To date, Ms. Dombasle has starred in scores of films, plays, and TV features, including Hollywood-made shows such as "Miami Vice." She has also made a mark behind the camera as a director and scriptwriter. Two of her noteworthy films in these ca pacities were "Les Pyramides Bleues" and "Chasse-croisse."
When Ms. Dombasle talks about her life in films and as a singer, she in evitably refers to an artiste's inner life.
"You are always chasing an ideal as an artiste," she said. "You are trying to be above yourself. Perhaps that's why artistes are tormented in their person al lives it is because of what they do for a living. And yet, it is exciting. It's the only life they can lead: exciting, but dangerous, daring, and most de structive."
If there's a philosophical note that threads through her conversation, it is because Ms. Dombasle is indeed a di alectician. In that, she complements her equally famous spouse, the philoso pher Bernard-Henri Levy. Their Left Bank apartment in Paris is probably the city's best-known literary and polit ical salon.
Her fame has left her surprisingly unaffected. When she showed up late 'You are always chasing an ideal as an artiste. You are trying to be above yourself/ for a lunch interview, Ms. Dombasle was apologetic to the point of making reporter embarrassed. And even though hers was one of the most recog nizable faces in a room filled with iiber- egos, she chatted with people like Hen ry Kissinger and the waiters with equal modesty and ease.
When asked about this, Ms. Dom basle said: "I was raised among very brilliant people, some of whom intimi dated me with their brilliance. I even tually learned to hold my own but as an artiste, Fm always learning through observation. Yes, the subconscious plays a big part in all this, but an artiste has to have a fundamental modesty in order to keep learning."
Which, of all the praise that's been heaped on her, has she found most grat ifying?
Her response was instantaneous.
"When I was very young, a teacher said to me, 'You have gold in your " Ms. Dombasle said.
Then she was off to a performance that she was giving at a benefit in Harlem. The next day, there would be another appearance at a charity event. After that, it was off to the Cannes Film Festival, where her new film, "Nouvelle Chance," is being screened today. 05/24/06
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