To anybody who paid attention in 1988, Vanessa Paradis is not just the mother of Johnny Depp’s children but a uniquely Gallic pop icon: one whose sole memorable hit, Joe Le Taxi, polarised opinion like few others. It was either “brilliant” or “terrible”, but never “OK” or “a little bit irritating”. Dispatched with seemingly no care for performance by a teenage Lolita, its insouciance spoke volumes about France’s attitude to our own ambivalence towards their pop music. In her homeland, it spent 14 weeks at No 1.

Almost 20 years later, the part-time star’s fifth album has also spent time atop the French charts, and little has changed. During the course of these 11 songs, Paradis rarely seems to contemplate putting in a decent shift; while her producer, Matthieu Chedid (aka M, an unfathomably popular high-concept pasticheur), can be easily pictured shrugging his shoulders every time she asked for ideas.

Trying to impress us was simply the last thing on their minds, yet what the pair have fashioned is an exquisite pop album that oozes nouvelle vague. Faced with the oh-so English charms of Sugababes (so aspirationally cool), Girls Aloud (so camp) or Katie Melua (so-so), it refuses to compete. One expects “ooh-la-la”, but one actually gets “you fill me with inertia.” It is irresistibly sexy, but Paradis wants us to know that we can’t get close.

From the first beats of the crisp Motown-meets-Blondie template of Divine Idylle, Paradis uses her voices (the sweet, the 20-Gauloises-a-day, and the old Lolita) as masks. On Les Piles, she and M trade vocals like lovers trying to disguise the fact that they have just woken up in different rooms from those in which they told their partner they would be in. She names a song after Chet Baker; adapts Irrésistiblement, written by the doyenne of the avant garde, Brigitte Fontaine, converting it with banjo and guitars into a beaty pop tune; and, in a double nod to her man’s most famous role, adds a snatch of Popeye the Sailorman before Jackadi.

But what would the results have been if she had just tried a little harder? I would probably have knocked another star off.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2009
• The 100 Worst Movies of 2009
• The 100 Best Films of the Decade