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New Yorker, Feature >>
Arielle Dombasle, a movie actress who is half of France's most fa mous her husband is Bernard- Henri Levy, the dashing philosopher- journalist and timber-fortune has hitherto been best known in this coun try for her appearance, in 1984, in the steamy miniseries "Lace," in which she played one of the bitches who were not Phoebe Cates's mother. She is about to present another facet of her artistic per sonality, that of chanteuse: next week she will be appearing at the Supper Club, performing hits from the forties and fifties that she delivers in a breathy Gallic soprano. The effect is as if Mar ilyn Monroe had attempted to channel Edith Piaf; and Dombasle, who is forty- eight and has long, honey-blond hair, pronounced pout, and what has plausi bly been described as the smallest waist in Paris, has been performing to capac ity crowds all over France.
The other night, Dombasle was re hearsing in a recording studio in the West Twenties with the New York Big Band, which will be accompanying her at the Supper Club. She wore a clingy, fine-gauge cashmere sweater and low- rise jeans, her hair was pulled back into a fur scrunchie, and a pair of Chanel sunglasses sat atop her head. "Look how pretty they are! And so old!" she said, casting an approving eye over the mostly grizzled heads of the assembled musi cians, some of whom could have played the songs on Dombasle's last album, "Amor "Rhum and Coca- Cola," "Besame when they were fresh, new compositions. Joe Bat- taglia, the band's elderly leader, referred to her as "young lady."
"You photograph well," he said, look ing at a picture, propped on her music stand, of a sultry Dombasle embracing her late, beloved cat, Sloogy.
"Well, with the right lighting every one does," Dombasle said.
The era from which her repertoire is drawn was an epoque benie in which American relations were at their warmest, Dombasle had explained ear lier in the week over tea at the Carlyle Hotel. She was born in Connecticut to French parents and brought up in Mexico, where her grandfather, an intimate of de Gaulle, was ambassador. She ad mits to a fondness for the United States currently uncommon among her French peers. "There is so much misunder standing," she said with a sigh. "When Arielle Dombasle the)' pour wine in the streets here, it is pity. And in France, too, they have so many wrong ideas in the head."
She shares her conviction of the vir tues of America with her husband, whose most recent book, "American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Foot steps ot Tocqueville," was a spectacu larly panned national tour horizon, and his first American best-seller. Dombasle and B.H.L., as he is known in France, have been married for thirteen years, ha\ing conducted a clandestine affair tor the previous seven while both were mar ried to other people. She claims to have fallen in love with B.H.L. in 1979, solely on the strength of a brooding photograph on the cover of "La Barba ric a Visage Humain," the book that made him famous in France, because, she thought, he looked like Christ. The couple has homes in Paris and in Mar- rakech, where they bought a palace whose previous owners include AJain Dclon andj. Paul Jr. "Of course, with money you travel first class, so it is more comfortable, but that is the only thing money brings," Dombasle said. Her Latin songs are in pan a tribute to the Mexican maids who reared her. "I was miserable in my extraordinary cas tle," she said, "and I was happy with my poor maids in the barrio."
She moved to Paris at eighteen to study classical Baroque opera but was "stolen by the movies"; her break through role was in Eric Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach." These days, she prefers singing to acting. "I've been singing in some remote places, for in stance in Bordeaux, where I don't know a soul," she said. "And still people come in order to get a moment of commu nion." During a break in the rehearsal, Dombasle had an opportunity for a mo ment ot communion, or at least of com munication, with the musicians, who found it charming to mingle with French movie star even if they had not seen any ot her movies, and among whom there were several who remem bered when American relations had been very warm indeed, "I only learned to say two things in French," said John Scorzello, a trumpet player who had been stationed in France after the war. "Combien? and Bonjour, man petit poulet."
Rebecca Mead 09/18/06
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