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Connecticut Post, Feature >>
Singer-actress aims to straddle U.S.-French divide
By JOE MEYERS
You'd be hard-pressed to find a better spokesperson for multi-culturalism than the singer-actress Arielle Dombasle. Born in Hartford to French parents who were living in Norwich at the time, Arielle then spent much of her childhood in Mexico before the family returned to France when she was 18.
"I'm a French American-Chicana," Dombasle said, with a laugh, during a phone interview from her home in Paris last week.
Dombasle loves her cultural mix and wishes there were no borders between French and American art.
As a child of the 1950s and '60s, Domhasle loved the films and pop music that united America and France Vincente Minelli's Oscar-winni- 'An American in Paris' and the french tours of American stars such as Dean Martin, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.
.The CD includes the title tune along with "C'est Magnifique" rom the Cole Porter show "Can Can" and a mix of French and American standards that includes "Dream a Little Dream" and "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup."
"I went back to the music of my parents, the music of my youth," Dombasle said of her choice of songs for the new CD and her re-immersion in American pop.
"I listened to Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Julie London, Billie Holliday ... they all inspired me. Little by little, came up with songs that were not too well-known now," she said.
Because musical recording is not nearly as expensive in France as it is in this country, Dombasle was able to experience what she calls "the luxury of singing live with the orchestra like people did in the 1950s."
"It sounds real," Dombasle said of recording songs with flesh-and -blood musicians in the studio, the way Ella and Frank Sinatra used to record.
"Now they do everything with computers and it's mechanical. With real musicians it is completely different ... I think this is the way it should be," she said of the rich landscape of sound behind her voice on the CD.
Dombasle celebrated the release of the CD with a recent three-night engagement at New York's Supper Club, of which one critic wrote, "[She arrives] at a time when France and America are not exactly enjoying a mutual adoration society. But if there were ever an ambassador who could charm both sides into submission, it is Ms. Dombasle."
Buoyed by her New York success, Dombasle wants to return for a full-Fledged tour that would include a stop in her home state.
"I miss the French-American crossover ... it's totally gone now," Dombasle said of the old pop music alliances of the 1950s '60s.
Of her own dreams to find place for her music in the country where she was born, the singer said, "It's extremely hard. You have to have recording company behind you because if the public doesn't come to your concerts the record won't sell."
In France Dombasle plays to packed houses and her debut pop CD, Amor Amor, released earlier this year, went platinum.
"Unfortunately, everything ends up with you having to earn money [in the recording and concert business] ... everything is so connected with efficiency and money," Dombasle said.
Although she set out to be singer, Dombasle was sidetracked into film in her 20s when the great French director Eric Rohmer cast her in the 1978 "Perceval le Gallois."
Dombasle was cast on the basis of her voice for musical sequences, but Rohmer (and movie audiences) were immediately captivated by the performer's beauty and charm.
Soon, the young woman was playing non-singing roles in other Rohmer films, such as "Le Beau Mariage" (1982) and "Pauline a la plage" (1983), both of which found favor with critics and arthouse audiences on this side of the Atlantic.
The actress visited these shores in the 1980s for guest spots on "Miami Vice" and role in the camp classic TV miniseries "Lace" (which featured one of the most frequently quoted opening lines of that decade: "Which one of you b---s is my mother?").
In France, Dombasle's celebrity expanded in 1993 when she married one of the country's leading intellectuals, Bernard-Henri Levy. Vanity Fair has dubbed them "France's most famous couple."
The performer said it amazes her to look back at career that has had so many interesting detours since she was studying opera at the Conservatoire de Musique de Paris.
"I was always studying and listening," Dombasle says of the role of music in her life. "Always the female voices."
When she was a student, Dombasle met the great diva Maria Callas-- who was then living in Paris-- who told her, "It can take a long time to arrive at the place known as yourself."
For the singer-actress that "place" includes the country of her birth. "My dream is to go back and tour America," she said of the musical expedition her representatives are trying to put together right now.
Arielle Dombasle's latest CD C'Est Si Bon (Sony BMG France) is now available. For more information on the singer-actress, visit www.arielle-dombasle.net 10/31/06
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