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Bernard H. Levy and Arielle Dombasle Fairytale

By Wilmaryad Oscallas on | From gayarabguy.blogspot.com

French actress Arielle Dombasle arrives at Guillaume Depardieu's funeral service at Notre-Damme Church on October 17, 2008 in Bougival, France. (Getty Images)more pics »
Cette semaine aura pour thème l'amour et la Saint Valentin. Ooops, I hope I didn't give too much away. Even if you got the hint, a surprise is awaiting you right after Valentine's Day. So, in waiting, sit back and munch on the posts I have run late concocting especially for la fête de l'amour.

If you read some of my previous posts, you would know that love and I are not friends anymore. Many romantic disappointments in a row seemed to have, indeed, taken their toll on my ability and intention to fall in it. Having been a hopeful romantic all my life, I was surprised to reach the point of considering romance a risk not worth taking. Certain recent events, however, shook up the very foundation of our estrangement. One of them is the controversial couple that is Bernard-Henri Levy and Arielle Dombasle.

A few days ago, I watched an interview of Arielle Dombasle with Charlie Rose talking about her eclectic life growing up, her current artistic projects and her much-publicized love affair with Bernard-Henri Levy. Skeptical towards and intrigued by her candor and passion, I went on to watch many videos about her, from interviews to portraits to stage performances. Calling Arielle Dombasle an exotic creature wouldn't be an exaggeration. Besides her elongated, emaciated and graceful figure and her alienesque angelic face, the multifaceted woman's cultural heritage would form a triangle on a geography map.

Born in Connecticut to French parents, Arielle Dombasle grew up in Mexico where she lost her mother at 11, then ventured to study opera in Paris, where she lived with her poetess of a grandmother and met the love of her life on the cover of a book. She is a serious actress, an accomplished singer, an original filmmaker, and was for seven years the mistress of one of France's "popular" philosophers. The girl, who grew up mostly surrounded by women, was taken aback by the creeping of a male figure into her man-free life. A man with whom she fell in love on the cover of his first book. His sad eyes made her believe she was the only one to save him.

The man on the cover in need of saving was none other than Bernard-Henri Levy, an Algerian-born Jew who rose to fame as one of France's "popular" philosophers — Popular, here, carries a double meaning. Often slammed for being an anti-Palestinian chauvinistic millionaire heir who would be nothing without his father's connections or his current wife's plastic beauty, B.H.L. (shortening of Bernard-Henri Levy) is a famous and influential editor, philosopher and author. However, his philosophy is considered popular, in the sense that it is often criticized by French intellectuals for its simplistic nature ... a vulgarization of the serious field that is Philosophy. Before meeting Arielle, he had been married twice and has had a son and a daughter; the latter is a writer, too.

The way the man with the sad eyes and the shy exotic siren met is worthy of a fairytale. Convinced that Bernard-Henri was the man of her dreams, Arielle took advantage of a book signing at a cultural center and grabbed the book on whose cover she first saw him, hoping to have the author autograph it. In interviews, he compared the way the shy woman made her way, through the hoards of women surrounding him, to the biblical scene of the Red Sea parting. She manned up and invited him to one of her performances. He looked at her and signed only one word "Waiting ..." The Franco-American Chicana was euphoric, thinking this was the start of the romance of her dreams. Bernard-Henri Levy never showed up.

Some time later, Arielle Dombasle was performing at the world-renowned Milanese opera house Teatro alla Scalla. That very night, as she was leaving La Scalla, she bumped into none other than Bernard-Henri Levy accompanied by a male friend. She was a woman in love and his second marriage left him miserable, so passion took over that night and with it started their 7-year-long affair. Arielle says of those seven years "It was painful and thrilling. I was the backstreet girl. I wanted to prove to him that I was made for him." Then, in 1993, the lovers finally tied the knot and Arielle felt like "Life, finally, smiled at me."

The couple is, to this day, considered a complete mismatch. He, the grave and high-strung intellectual whose worries drew road maps of wrinkles all over his forehead. She, the nonchalant ethereal Juliette of the world whose melodramatic romantic airs exasperate and intrigue. Although often caricatured in the media as a brainless bimbo (her name pronounced "Dumb-all" didn't help) with an acquired aristocratic snottiness and a too-good-to-be-true romantic devotion to her husband, Arielle Dombasle's Harlequin love for her beloved seems unshaken by her/their critics. Her detractors think she was smart enough to marry another wealthy and influential Jew to help advance her career. His detractors believe he married a multicultural good-looking woman to appeal to the masses, whether in France (her country of adoption), in the United States (her country of origin) or even in Mexico (her country of upbringing).

Personally, I think Bernard-Henri Levy smiles more since he's been with Arielle Dombasle. They complement each other perfectly and balance out their respective contrasting personality traits. She adds fun and lightness to his seriousness and gravity, and he seems to provide the little girl in her with a reassuring manly, almost fatherly, presence. She even confides finding the blue light of his laptop screen, which he uses late at night in bed, sleep enticing. To her, he is a hero, so much so that she addresses him with a venerable "thou." She is aware that her idealistic candor and way of being amuses him. But this does not stop him from making her read his books before anybody else. She likes how he makes her feel like a best friend, listening to her advice and trusting her instincts.

All in all, despite what is said about the couple, I find them particularly endearing. Their love story is definitely inspiring, with its thrill and grill, its playfulness and seriousness, as well as the disdain and fascination it provokes. At the end of the day, each of them seems to have found an ideal in the other, and this especially resurrects my faith in idealistic love. Bernard-Henri Levy and Arielle Dombasle's love, to me, is a success story because it looks serene behind the glitter; they seem to have brought the fantasy to real life and, even if many mock their sappy love display, these two don't seem bothered by naysayers. The way they look at each other, alone, speaks volumes about the depth of their mutual admiration, respect and affection.

Maybe there is hope for us, lonely, unconventional and eccentric idealists in this world? Maybe, one day, we will meet the pair of eyes that will look at us with love and respect, instead of ridicule and indifference? As Arielle candidly said in an interview "It's in the way he looks at me. The way [my husband looks at me] makes me feel bigger than I am. I feel like a princess [...] when you look at people and elevate them, then you can really think you bring them something."

Until I meet that pair of eyes, I leave you with an exquisite cover of the classic "Rum and Coca Cola" by Arielle Dombasle and a montage of Arielle Dombasle singing Odysseus Diapo

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