Film: Gainsbourg
Year of production: 2010
Distributor: Optimum Releasing
Certificate: 15
Running time: 117mins
Director: Joann Sfar
Starring: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta
Genre: Biopic
Format: DVD
Country of production: France
Language: French
Writers Name: Joann Sfar
Gainsbourg is the directorial debut of acclaimed graphic artist Joann Sfar, who took the brave step of bringing to the screen the life of one of France
The film charts the life of Serge Gainsbourg, a musician responsible for penning some of the most memorable melodies to come out of the 1960s. Starting out with his precocious and formative childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris
Sfar takes an early opportunity to introduce the audience to the major influences in the life of the young Serge. Gainsbourg has an irrepressible creativity, a confrontational nature and, perhaps most importantly, a preoccupation with his body image and identity. The yoke of Nazi occupation is manifest in Serge’s Paris, and his obsession with his own ‘Jewishness’ begins to take physical shape in the form of a grotesque fascist parody that stalks him as he walks the city streets. Eventually, the creature metamorphoses into the hideous ‘Gainsbarre’ (Doug Jones), alter-ego to the real-life Gainsbourg and the literal representation of his darker impulses.
We are briefly treated to images of Serge as a pupil, where his skills as an artist and willingness to create erotic images for his classmates hint at his future lifestyle. Flash forward to art school, where those selfsame talents, coupled with his burgeoning music career, begin to win Serge many admirers, in spite of his ‘ugly mug’. The film is peppered with appearances by the manipulative spectre of Gainsbarre, whom many viewers will recognise from Doug Jones’ performance as the faun in Pan’s Labyrinth (2007). Gainsbarre begins to coerce Serge into indulging his dark side, and his successes as a musician plot a parallel course to his growing infamy.
Inflated with his own success and notoriety, Gainsbourg embarks on a series of high-profile affairs and collaborations with some of the most glamorous women of the era; Juliette Gréco (Anna Mouglalis), Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta) and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon). The audience are treated to Sfar’s take on the creation of some of Gainsbourg’s most enduring tracks, including ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘Comic Strip’, and ‘Je t’aime… Moi Non Plus’, which he created with these women as his muses and collaborators.
As Gainsbourg’s career reaches the crest of its mighty arc, Serge finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish himself from Gainsbarre. His relationships begin to implode around him, and he seems to court controversy at every step. Eventually, the cumulative effects of his debauched lifestyle take their toll and Serge suffers a cardiac episode. This marks the downswing of his career and his life spirals towards an inevitably self-destructive climax.
Gainsbourg is a very daring piece of cinema; not often is a biopic so explicitly fantastical. Sfar plays on Gainsbourg’s legendary status to create a film that weaves between the realms of fantasy and reality in its depiction of a real-life icon. It’s peculiar to see Serge, whose life reads like an elaborate fiction anyway, refracted through the imaginative lens of a graphic artist. The scenes with Doug Jones’ Gainsbarre are pure fantasy and the appearance of Bardot in Gainsbourg’s artists’ residence is also inescapably filmic. Despite this, Sfar has a tendency to rationalise also. There are moments, including Serge’s drunken late-night confrontation with an enraged Jane Birkin, when you could be fooled into thinking you were watching a straight biopic. The real-life Gainsbourg was such a larger-than-life figure that he can be lionised and demonised in equal measure. When Sfar strays from this portrayal and seeks to humanise him, the film begins to lose its way. The fantasy and surreal elements of the film are very much integrated into the main narrative, but it is unclear quite what Sfar intended by them. At first, the fantastical scenarios and characters are clearly figments of Serge’s imagination, but as Gainsbarre gains prominence and influence, this becomes less evident. In reality, Gainsbourg used the name to refer to his abhorrent behaviour when drunk, but in keeping with the man’s legend, Sfar has created a Jeykll-and-Hyde-esque dual personality. As a result, Gainsbourg’s onscreen world is somewhat confusing.
Plaudits are due to Eric Elmosnino, who inhabits Gainsbourg in a wholly believable way. Elmosnino bears more than a passing resemblance to the real-life Serge, and coupled with a good bit of costume design and the ubiquitous Gitanes perched in the corner of his mouth, the similarities are striking. Unfortunately, Elmosnino’s performance is perhaps the only consistent element of the film. He embodies the seemingly effortless cool of the French icon, and the same can be said for Laetitia Casta’s Bardot. Their performances ground the film in a recognisable time and place, but Gainsbourg just seems a little unsure of itself. The fantastical nature of the adaptation deserve complete commitment, but have to battle for screen time with the portrayal of Gainsbourg’s remarkable life. As a result, both suffer.
Gainsbourg promises a lot, but unfortunately never quite delivers. As one would expect, the soundtrack is fantastic and interwoven with cues taken from the musician’s original work; no fan of Serge’s can fail to be floored when the string section from ‘Initials B.B’ strikes up for the first time. It’s clear that the project has been undertaken with a great deal of love; what the film lacks in succinctness it makes up for in sincerity. Serge lived a fascinating life through some of the most tumultuous years of the 20th century and this is a novel and adventurous re-imagining of that life, but ultimately Gainsbourg feels like what it is; an all too ambitious and confused undertaking for a debut director.
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