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New York Times (national edition), Feature >>
A French Singer Arrives, Trailing a Big Band and a Lot of Buildup
Consumers of the panting hyperbole surrounding Arielle Dombasle might be fooled into imagining that this 53-year-old French actress, chanteuse and sex kitten is the ultimate Gallic fusion of Edith Piaf and Brigitte Bardot arrived on these shores to teach us American hicks secrets of sex and sophistication know only to the French. sex and When European performers are packaged this aggressively as the ne plus ultra of Continental je ne sais quoi, we Americans tend to lose our minds and bite the bait. Ms. Dombasle's marriage to the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy also adds an in timidating cultural credential.
Don't believe the hype. To watch Ms. Dombasle's sloppy, poorly sung concert at the Supper Club on Tuesday evening was to encounter a performer smugly content to express herself with perfunctory hand-on-hip wriggles, gaudy costume changes (from black to gold lame to tan) and inane patter. During much of the concert, black-and-white film clips of New York and Parisian nightlife tried to establish Ms. Dombasle as the contemporary heir to a classic nightclub tradition. She isn't.
Ms. Dombasle's small wavery voice has about six stable notes in its middle range. When she pushes her singing up, it goes excruciatingly flat. Singing an international program (mostly in English) accompanied by the New York Big Band (a 20-plus ensemble with strings) she demonstrated a complete absence of interpretive depth or indeed any sense that these songs might be connected to people's personal experi ence. She was the least uncomfortable chirping frivolous Latin Ameri can novelties.
The event and its publicity blitz reminded me of the furor surrounding another pouty blonde, Pfd Zadora, two decades ago. At least one could say of Ms. Zadora that she had a real voice (reminiscent of the young Liza Minnelli) even if it projected every thing in the same formulaic way. That's not the case here. 09/21/06
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