Review of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2010) by Stuart W — 18 Jul 2010

Musical biopics have become a bit cliched of late. You take a legendary artist who has had a troubled life and struggles with their genius through drink or drugs, while being involved in a volatile relationship (see Ray, Walk The Line etc). So a movie about the life of controversial French artist Serge Gainsburg looks like it could head down the same rocky road. Luckily, it doesn't.

Split into two halves, it deals with Gainsburg's childhood as a Russian/Jew being brought up in Paris during the Nazi occupation, and how he found a love for art, creating vivid cartoon-like images, at the same time becoming obsessed with a young nude model who he draws, even for his boarding school teacher where he is sent to hide from possible capture by the Nazis.

More on a few years, and Gainsburg is playing piano is bars and drag clubs, where he is given the opportunity to have his own songs sung, soon becoming noticed by singer Juliette Greco, who while desperate to seduce him, gives him the break that he needs, and soon he becomes the attention of film star Brigitte Bardot and later British actress Jane Birkin, who he marries and they produce the now legendary song Je T'aime...moi non plus. Soon his slow self destruction begins.

I didn't really know too much about the singer/songwriter apart from his notorious banned song and his acts of madness (like burning money on TV and creating a reggae version of the French National Anthem) so to see what a man's life is like makes you want to investigate more. The thing that artist cum director Joann Sfar has done to make this different from recent biopics is that it is more like a fairy-tale.

He has introduced two grotesque characters, the first, a round-faced, four armed, multi-legged giant which represents Gainsburg during his years living in the shadows of the Nazis, while the thin, larged nosed, spiny fingered alter-ego of his later life acts as his bad side, and makes the film just that little more interesting.

Eric Elmosnino, as the older Serge, is a revelation. His is a brilliant realised performance, mixing elements of cool along with the mental struggles that he suffered, bringing himself close to death due to his smoking and heavy drinking. He never takes his performance over the top, making you like him, even at his darkest hour. Laetitia Casta, as the screen goddess Bardot, gets the best entrance ever in a movie. Walking down a corridor with thigh-length boots, flowing blonde locks and a long-haired dog by her side, it sums up the beauty of an actress who could turn heads at the blink of an eye.

There is a sense of tragedy as Lucy Gordon, who plays Birkin, hung herself while the film was in post production, and her performance, while very good, just gives it a deeper feeling of sadness.

While not a perfect film, you always feel that Sfar really likes Gainsburg too much to really show his bad side, and the puppets, while inventive, do become intrusive on occasion, it is still a film to enjoy and give huge amounts of praise, capturing a time in which the French were at its coolest, and no one cooler than this musical genius.