They Won’t Go Home Again : Culture: Is the grass greener in L.A.? <i> Oui, </i> say many French people. But although they embrace the new, they hold onto some of what they had.

Three years ago, Dominique Lelong, 27, flew to Los Angeles from Paris to participate in an Insight training seminar--and discovered she could get a master’s degree in spiritual applied psychology at the University of Santa Monica. “It was exactly what I wanted to study. These courses are rarely even offered in France,” she says.

So Lelong landed a job baby-sitting a 4-year-old whose American parents wanted their daughter to learn French--and joined more than 300,000 French-speaking immigrants who call the Southland home. Many are French; others are from former French colonies such as Morocco, Vietnam or Quebec. In either case, through sheer numbers they are helping shape Southland culture.

Lelong, who now lives with her San Francisco fiance on a 50-foot sailboat, looks forward to someday visiting Paris. But move back?

“Why would I? What’s there for me now?” she asks.

French painter Tony Beauvy, 40, also plans to stay here, despite his contention that French artists hold a higher social rank than do their American counterparts. Since moving here, Beauvy has developed a love for surfing--and there are, he laments, few surfing spots in France.

Hopping into his white pickup to search for yet another perfect wave, Beauvy talks about occasionally visiting family in France--while living here.

“I feel freer here. France is too tradition-bound for me. I’ve discovered I prefer life on the frontier,” he says.

Neither of their stories is particularly unusual. Indeed, when Los Angeles was proclaimed California’s capital in 1835, the city’s second largest ethnic group was French, says French consul Jean-Maurice Ripert.

The French also introduced Champagne grapes here and planted some of the first orange groves, he says. Frenchman Louis Prevost founded the city of Riverside while French planner and architect J.J. Vioget laid out the original plans for San Francisco. Two of Los Angeles’ early French mayors, Damien Marchessault and Guy Mascarel, even helped keep Southern California on the Union side during the Civil War.

Today, the French influence manifests itself in the Beverly Hills-based magazine Aller Simple (translated, “one-way ticket”) and the Hollywood-based newsletter France Service. Also in the ubiquitous croissants, as well as the Westwood-based France On Line computer service and the Lycee Francais de Los Angeles whose nearly 1,000 students, many the children of diplomats, are taught from grade school through high school almost wholly in French.

In addition, several dozen French entrepreneurs periodically network with Club L’Avenir (translated, “the future”), their meetings often catered by one of the 120 chefs in the Club Culinaire Francais, whose monthly meetings are in French and whose chefs dictate much of the city’s haute cuisine.

The city is also home to the Alliance Francaise, part of the French government’s education system geared to those who--how to put it?--inexplicably missed out on the glories of France--and French--in high school.

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Given the proverbial French snobbism, why have so many forsaken the Old World’s glories for the crassness of the New?

Aller Simple Editor Joseline Tamers thinks word has gotten back that being a Frenchman here has a cachet that often opens doors otherwise firmly shut in France. Thus, she cites a high school drop-out who parlayed his French kitchen experience--washing dishes--into a cooking job here.

“In France, he would have been quickly found out. But here, the fact that he had worked in a French kitchen was thought to mean he knew something about French cooking. He rode on the reputation of France,” she says with a laugh.

Jean-Noel Frydman, founder of France On Line, says, “It’s easier to do business here. In Paris, unless you know someone or are part of the upper class, you cannot get them on the phone, and they don’t want to know you.”

In addition, French government permits are needed for even innocuous activities, such as operating the same modem he merely plugs into an outlet here. The combination of social barriers and runaway bureaucracy would never allow him to launch his business in France.

But even while celebrating American freedoms, Frydman--like many French expatriates--doggedly holds onto French mannerisms. Thus, rather than reading unrefined American newspapers, Frydman gets his news of the world by electronically scanning Le Monde, Paris’ principal daily, available through his service.

And he continues smoking--an activity much more common in France than here.

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Free-lance journalist Claudine Mulard, 46, discovered she so enjoyed Angeleno freedom that she sold her Paris apartment eight years ago and bought a West Hollywood condo.

“Whenever I tell this to anyone, they look at me like I’m crazy. They think I’ve cut my ties to the real culture, as if France monopolizes culture and America is for barbarians.

“It’s almost like you’re allowed to live in Los Angeles, but you’re not supposed to like it. But who is to say I must like Paris better than Los Angeles?” she demands.

Ripert, too, clearly doesn’t find the Los Angeles lifestyle entirely displeasing. A recent party at his Beverly Hills estate featured hundreds of Los Angeles society types waiting to help him celebrate French independence day. (France, after all, took the leap a mere 13 years after the Americans did.)

Certainly, the party around a geometric pool whose ripples whimsically reflected the setting sun seemed at least as much Californian as French.

Parisian parties, says Ripert, center principally around formal dinners in which each guest puts forth his point of view before a dozen others in wide-ranging, often animated discussions. The host’s role is to promote vivid debate, with shouting and dramatic gestures a cherished part of the discussion.

Although Ripert’s eyes light up as he describes them, he adds that the same French citizen who so passionately argues his ideas must also hide his success, for fear of envy and suspicion.

“Nobody in France would ever admit to being a millionaire,” says Ripert. “Instead, no matter how well they do, they’ll always complain about how difficult it is to make ends meet.”

Partly as a result the most talented French come here, where opportunity and success can be openly savored, he says.

Colette Boehm, president of the Alliance Francaise of Los Angeles, says she, too, prefers French culture--but from a distance.

She often finds the French “very difficult. They want to be right all the time. They’re stubborn and egotistical. Their initial response to anything is, ‘No, but. . . .’ ” Americans, by contrast “are easier to work with. They will ask one, two, three questions, then say, “Yes, let’s do it.’ ”

Nevertheless, she says, “When the French do something, “they always do it very elegantly. They have a style, which is missing here.”

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Esther Kabazz, a French Moroccan and founder of the Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, may be one of the final arbiters of traditional French culture.

The essence of French pride, she explains, lies in a widespread knowledge of the world. Whereas Angelenos often pride themselves on amassing more money or the “right” address, Parisians pride themselves on visiting museums and going to the opera.

That cultural influence often extends to the street sweeper, who often knows more world history and literature than does the white-collar Angeleno, she says.

Kabazz educates her students in French culture while incorporating a broader world view she learned during World War II, isolated from her French schoolmates because she is Jewish.

It was the memory of that isolation and the widespread French collaboration with the Nazis that drove her here. Thus, Kabazz’s methods are a combination of French discipline with the American attitude of live and let live.

During the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, for example, Kabazz told her Iraqi and Kuwaiti students that “the war had nothing to do with us. We are here in America, and we need to respect one another.”

Partly because of this, the children remained friends even as their parents went to war. In France, this sort of tolerance is still not widespread, especially of foreigners, she says.

Says Tamers, French expatriates “are not totally American, but we are no longer French. Many of us want to go back to France, but we don’t want to live there.

“We are sitting on two chairs, but we don’t want to change. We don’t always know how to change.

“It’s not always comfortable.”