This Side of Paradis

The question, of course, is: How can she sing with her face pressed up against the cushion like that? She manages, she manages. In fact, Parisian pop star/actress/model Vanessa Paradis—rhymes with "French Madonna" —does just fine, as GEORGE KALOGERAKIS learns

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS

No, she doesn't play guitar. That guitar is a prop. Got a problem with that?

But she swings and trills inside giant birdcage (in a delightfully sly Chanel commercial), and, on her English-language album debut, she sings. Vanessa Paradis, 19, a star in France since she was 14, is fixing her sultry gaze on the New World.

Her provenance leads you to all kinds of assumptions. Now, what might an album from a French pop singer/actress/model sound like? Europoppy, you figure—in that outdoor-cafe-after-the-Metro-has-shut-down way. Ma is non. Vanessa Paradis is a pure pop confection, yes, but sonically it's got the distinctly American 60s feel of Motown and the Lovin' Spoonful—unsurprising given that it was produced and written (most ly) by retro buff Lenny Kravitz.

It must be noted that Vanessa Paradis' "Vanessa Paradis" and our "Lenny Kra~ itz." But there's also a bal lad about ecology, and a chirp)' ditty tibout alking in the park when the 1 and At's not ra ." Most meniorahie title? "tour love Has Got a Handle on My Minl." (Vanessa on Lenny: "When I read Isome ofj those lyrics I was like, God, how does he1 know?') Bestf all, she does Lou And it's a testimony to Parad `in erçvkills that, somehow, W~itmg (or tt Man" no longer sou as iflt's abmt scoring heroin in H rn. Not at till.

Most memorable title? "Your Love Has Got a Handle on My Mind."