Film: Gainsbourg
Release date: 10th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 122 mins
Director: Joann Sfar
Starring: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones, Anna Mouglalis
Genre: Drama/Biography/Musical
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: France/USA
The life and death of a musical legend is always a good excuse to make a film of grandeur. Even better if the deceased is as bizarre and sensual as the French social rebel Serge Gainsbourg. Serge Gainsbourg: Vie Heroique is the directorial debut from Franco-Belgian comic book writer Joann Sfar, slipping excessive imagination and the odd animation into the already overflowing glass of Gainsbourg’s life story.
Serge Gainsbourg: part-time jazz soloist, part-time pianist, part-time kitsch pop vocalist, part-time Brigitte Bardot duettist, part-time reggae experimentalist…full-time ladies’ man. With his ambitious female-based pastimes, his love of alcohol and his imperfect, alluring vocals, Gainsbourg is the perfect rock‘n’roll cliché. But before all that, Sfar introduces Serge before he was even ‘Serge’ – mischievous Jewish boy Lucien Ginsberg flits his way over French cobblestones and dances with imaginary anti-Semitic puppets. Intrigued yet?
The screen follows Lucien as he nonchalantly smokes cigarettes and steals from sweet shops, whilst caricaturing his childhood terrors within Nazi occupied Paris. Then as Lucien swaps sweets and piano practise for art and sex, the film gives an overview of his episodic wives and mistresses, detailing his ascension to cult provocateur and multi-faceted artist. He is persuaded to re-fashion himself as ‘Serge Gainsbourg’, as he grows into a complex performer with a somewhat grotesque beauty and unfaltering charisma…
The film focuses on Gainsbourg’s attraction to beautiful yet vulnerable women, allocating prominence to Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin and Juliette Greco. His whirlwind affair with Bardot implements a dirty fairytale at the start of his career, and her disappearance can only accentuate the elements of noir and notoriety in Gainsbourg’s character. His irrevocable despair is subsequently tamed by British darling Jane Birkin, with her childlike outfits, endless legs and fragile vocals that work so well alongside his songs. Gainsbourg cannot seem to avoid exposed skin, he cannot suppress his indisputable talent, and between him and his ladies more cigarettes are smoked than notes sung.
Eric Elmosino takes the lead as Gainsbourg himself, expertly cast with a remarkable resemblance to the real thing (including the trademark nasal silhouette). He expertly projects the insecurity of our ‘hero’, screaming at his inner ghouls and internal voices, whispering seductive nothings to teenage girls, and allowing his face to speak a thousand words without so much as parting his lips. Elmosino lifts Gainsbourg off the 35mm celluloid film and lets him fly above the audience in an intoxicating gust of disobedience and charm. Not forgetting young Serge either, played by Kacey Mottet Klein, who effortlessly opens his little mouth and lets flawless, authentic acting fall out.
Gainsbourg’s girls are striking. A surplus of legs and derrieres and unfussy sexuality are interpreted by each actress in a way that allows the audience to fall in love with each of them in a different way. Laetitia Casta plays Brigitte Bardot, a mirror of Gainsbourg’s animated and seductive persona. The blonde mane, the thigh skimming boots, the frivolous giggle – Casta has got it perfect, right down to the partially absent stare of elation mixed with a drop of bashfulness.
The film itself is dedicated to the deeply saddening death of the actress Lucy Gordon, who committed suicide during the final stages of filming. Gordon plays Jane Birkin, the girl of unthinkable beauty who rescues Gainsbourg from his post-Bardot emotional misery. Birkin speaks in endearing British-tinted French, and holds herself with clumsy elegance, but there is an unspoken reservation in either the scripting or the acting that force the audience to lament Bardot at the start. However, Gainsbourg’s gradual increase in taboo behaviour and disregard for morals override Birkin’s somewhat cold sensibility, and a brilliantly executed outburst from Gordon plants her safely inside our hearts.
Gainsbourg’s internal demons are represented by a reoccurring papier-mâché alter-ego with which other characters can converse. It is referred to as Gainsbourg’s “mug,” and is a very sly way of including the unsavoury side of Gainsbourg without contaminating the amorous side of the tale. The selection of Gainsbourg tracks teamed with his surreal ‘mug’ underpins the entire movie with a sinister passion. He argues with himself, he talks to invisible voices; he lets his dark psychology get in the way of his raw ability. And yet the romantic tortured artist triumphs in his usual cinematic way, generating an atmosphere of electrical quality which make the 2 hours and 10 minutes moments well spent.
The risqué lyrics of ‘Je T’aime...Moi Non Plus’, Brigitte Bardot enigmatically singing “SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!” in ‘Comic Trip’, Gainsbourg dancing with his fingers across pianos and guitars, and, of course, the comic viewing of old alcoholic Serge slurring in clubs beside young hipsters... What the film lacks in biographical detail it makes up for in the precocious glamour of Gainsbourg. It’s probable that nobody could ever quite retell his life with the splendour that it deserves, but Sfar has certainly painted a video in a language that we can all understand. NM
No comments:
Post a Comment