Look up the word ‘louche’ in the OED, and there’s probably a tiny picture of Serge Gainsbourg next to it. In the popular imagination the man was a living poster for decadent living and sophisticated lechery; the leering Frenchman who recorded songs featuring unsimulated female orgasms and incestuous lyrics about his own daughter, the guy who told Whitney Houston that he wanted to ‘fuuurrk’ her live on French TV. To those in the know, however, this was all just rock n’ roll window dressing, the tip of a vast, fascinating iceberg. He was also a songwriter of genius, a musical pioneer and chameleon, a performer and raconteur of unsettling magnetism. A more than fitting subject, in fact, for a biopic. Respected French comic book artist and first-time director Joann Sfar is the one undertaking the adaption his own graphic novel Gainsbourg, Vie Héroïque, so a straightforward biopic in the style of the recent Edith Piaf film La Vie En Rose is not to be expected: but for all it’s visual dazzle and stylistic boldness, Gainsbourg has its’ own problems.
We are introduced to our hero as a rogueish young boy, smoking cigarettes on the beach, already restless with the endless Chopin that his father makes him recite at the piano. He wants to be a painter, not a musician, and his head is filled with cowboy comics, women and grotesque caricatures. As a Jew in occupied France he is made to feel even more of a freak and an outsider, but embraces this identity with gusto. He is first in line to collect his yellow star from the Nazis, and his imaginary friend is the grotesque caricatured Jew he sees in a film poster. The film sets its template early, as little anecdotes from Gainsbourg’s childhood and early manhood are embellished with animated sequences and magic-realist fantasies straight from the school of Terry Gilliam. The most notable of these fantasy apparitions is his alter ego, variously referred to as his ‘Mug’ and ‘Professor Flipus’, a rakish, natty, spindly-fingered parody of Gainsbourg’s own features, with a massive nose and ears, and an eerie light in his eyes, who spurs him on in times of self-doubt and shyness.
In typical biopic fashion we flash through the highlights of Gainsbourg’s legend as he drops out of art school and starts wowing the hip underground of Paris with his sharp, witty, surreal songs, impresses a coterie of quickly-glimpsed cult names and emerges from behind the scenes as an unlikely pop star in his own right.
Lead actor Eric Elmosnino captures the man’s essence beautifully, just the right blend of slyness, lechery and arrogance lacing every crease and bump in his doleful features. Indeed the film focuses on Elmosnino’s staggeringly accurate portrayal to such an extent that everyone else is relegated to the status of cameo. The film’s middle section degenerates into a superficial, if enjoyable parade of French celebrity names: ‘Hello, I’m Boris Vian/Brigitte Bardot/France Gall’. At times it feels more like boxes are being ticked, an inventory of Gainsbourg’s life rather than an exploration or illumination: such is the curse of the biographical picture. There are numerous pleasures to be had, even here. His first encounter with Juliet Greco (Anna Mouglalis) is subtle and romantic, fuelled by his rendition of the melancholic ‘La Javonaise’, and his meeting with France Gall, though marred slightly by dialogue that’s too on-the-nose and knowing is enlivened no end by her startlingly energetic (and loud) performance of ‘Baby Pop’.
The main problem is one shared by all musical biopics since they started making them – fans of the artist will soon tire of the endless photocopies of the art and hunger for the real thing, something proved by scenes of Gainsbourg and Bardot (Laetitia Casta) sitting at the piano composing ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ or ‘Comic Strip’: throughout these scenes you may find yourself hankering to hear the originals, or see the wildly inventive promo videos that were shot at the time. This betrays another of the film’s flaws. Its’ budget may stretch to the odd papier mache mask, but not to a convincing recreation of the 1960s, where Gainsbourg was frequently a star on European television.
The film sparks into renewed life just at the point in the story where Gainsbourg himself did. His relationship with Jane Birkin, which could be argued was the key relationship in his life both personally and professionally is allowed to breathe and develop, and Lucy Gordon is every bit as entrancingly accurate in her portrayal of Birkin as Elmosnino is of Gainsbourg. It’s a horrible irony that this hypnotic young actress committed suicide during the film’s post-production, for if ever there was a star-making performance, this is one. When she goes out of the picture much of the spark and humanity leaves it too, and the film winds down like a grandfather clock without her.
In the final assessment Sfar’s film is plagued by the same demon that haunted two other recent music biopics – the Ian Dury story Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll and Anton Corbijn’s Control, about Ian Curtis of Joy Division. As uncannily accurate and fun as the performances both on and off stage undoubtedly are, wouldn’t you rather be watching actual footage of the actual artists? If a documentary ever comes out about Gainsbourg featuring all of those crazy dress-up pop scopitones that he, Bardot and Gall participated in it will immediately be way more compelling than the fictionalised account, puppets, masks, animations and all. Such is the nature of the moving image and the recorded sound: the real mumbles and rasps of the real Serge will never, can never be substituted. Alas.
Gainsbourg is in cinemas nationwide from July 30th 2010
[rating: 3/5]
