Oooh La La ARIELLE'S PERFECT PITCH

Arielle Dombasle, the terminally chic French chanteuse, actress, and other half of France's most celebrated couple—her husband is philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy—cannot imagine life without music. "My parents listened to music all day long. I've loved it since I was in the liquide amniotique," she says. A Connecticut native with French parents, she spent her childhood in Mexico, where she learned to sing with the family cook—from Spanish songs and Carmen to the music of the 30s and 40s. At 18, Dombasle moved to Paris to study opera and theater at the Conservatoire de Musique. "I always wanted to sing, but I felt like a little mouse, modest and shy. I wanted to be strong and secure musically before I made records," she explains. She became the muse of film director Eric Rohmer, and her role as Marion in the 1983 film Pauline at the Beach made her a star. In 2004, Dombasle's seductive album Amor Amor was released, a collection of the Mexican boleros and other Latin songs she heard as a girl. It went to No. 1 in France and sold more than 500,000 copies. "When success comes you are always surprised—it is like a miracle," she says. Her new album, C'est Si Bon—a compilation, she explains, of "the songs of my mother's youth"—will be released this fall, and Dombasle will perform in concert at New York's Supper Club with Joe Battaglia & the New York Big Band on September 19, 20, and 21.

TAMASIN DAY-LEWIS