Unlike the Moulin Rouge, where the rich went to slum with the bohemians in late-nineteenth-century Paris, this tiny boite modeled on a French absinthe house buzzes with a purely A-list energy. Unless the aspiring actors behind the bar get factored in.

With Holly's, the young guns at Star Group Management add another notch to their swiss-cheese belt already riddled with holes for Nacional, Tengu and Nine Thirty. Between frosted windows and sepia-toned photographs of barely-dressed buxom ladies hanging on black walls lies what might be the tiniest club in Hollywood, where a well-heeled crowd squeezes in. The space is predominantly candlelit, but there aren't many candles—which adds to the mystery, just like the gauzy silver curtains that separate every couch. Celebutantes go to next-door Nacional to make the scene, but Holly's is free of gossipmongers and cameraphones: The owners seem to have taken Amanda Scheer Demme's playbook on exclusivity, using the same (tough) rules for getting inside she notoriously used when she ran Teddy's and Tropicana Bar. Co-owner Rick Calamaro told us that those who want to get their foot in the door must know an owner, promoter, doorman or DJ, or have no less than one degree of separation. This, then, is a story about truth, beauty, freedom and love.—Alexandra Le Tellier