Toward the beginning of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, the biopic’s subject, little Lucien Ginsberg, later to become the prolific and infamous singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, is bopping down the streets of Nazi-occupied Paris. The Jewish son of Russian parents, Lucien is surrounded by frightening posters of anti-Semitic propaganda, featuring a large-headed, caricatured Jewish man with insulting French slurs written across the bottom. As Lucien walks by, the figure in the poster springs to life and climbs out of the portrait—a jarring moment for the audience, but not for Lucien. The figure, a Tim Burton-esque, short-legged cartoon strolling the real-life Parisian streets, interacts with the boy, who does nothing to hint that this is outside of an everyday occurrence.
This kind of odd surrealism permeates Gainsbourg, which won acclaim at this year’s Cesar and Tribeca Film Festivals and is being released in D.C. on October 14. Directed by famed graphic novelist Joann Sfar, Gainsbourg contains various characters and incidents that give it something of a comic book feel. In addition to the man from the poster, Gainsbourg’s gueule, French for “mug,” is a prominent character throughout the film. The superhumanly tall and lean figure, with creepily long fingers and a crescent-shaped nose, is an obvious personification of Gainsbourg’s darker side, and it follows him around throughout the film, engaging in conversation with him and offering terrible advice.
Although it may seem a tad strange in a movie about a musician, the surreal characters have a clear place in the film, which chronicles not only Gainsbourg’s career and personal life, but also the inner workings of his tortured, creative mind. Sfar’s brilliant cinematography allows for the adult Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino) to interact seamlessly with his mug, even once allowing it to carry him above the Paris skyline to return to the home of a lover. Why the mug can fly or how the musician actually wound up returning to the house is up for debate, but it is clear that in his head, the act was beyond his control. And the audience gets a stunning view of Sfar’s reimagining of Paris at night, complete with asymmetrical roofs and a sky straight out of a Van Gogh.
Much of the film revolves around Gainsbourg’s various tumultuous, high-profile relationships and the way each affects the trajectory of his career. The most prominent—and the one the film treats best—is that with Brigitte Bardot, played by Laetitia Casta. The role presents Casta with the challenge of portraying a still-living icon whose appearance, voice, and mannerisms are still sharply engrained in public memory. But she takes up the task remarkably well, and her Bardot is both sexy and human, while her on-screen chemistry with Elmosnino is captivating.
Being a film about a musician, especially one as famous and with such a diverse catalog as Gainsbourg, Sfar’s biggest obligation as a director was to do justice to his subject with the film’s score. This proves Gainsbourg’s greatest success. From beginning to end, music is a centerpiece and unifying thread for the film, from young Lucien’s encountering Nazis singing the French national anthem, to his earliest performances of other artists’ work in Paris piano bars, to his own pop compositions and later forays into Jamaican reggae. The actors perform Gainsbourg’s most renowned hits, including the controversial, sexual “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus,” in context within the film, but each would stand on its own as a successful cover version.
If a film can take its audience through an emotional train-wreck of a life, complete with lost love affairs, addiction, and obvious mental anguish, and still make its audience leave the theater cheerily whistling the ironically upbeat “Je Bois (Intoxicated Man),” it has to be remarkable. And Gainsbourg is just that.
