ViewGuide

Created Apr 26, 2013 08:13PM PST • Edited Dec 01, 2018 09:34AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   French musical sensation Serge Gainsbourg explains himself in this surreal biopic. Largely unknown here in America, Gainsbourg was a cross between Dylan, Sinatra and Leonard Cohen in France. The women he squired – including Brigitte Bardot during her superstar heyday – comprise a good part of his enduring allure. His famously ugly mug proved that a musician needn’t be handsome when it comes to seduction.

   While a bit tedious for an American like me, his story is fascinating and sexy. The former arises because he was a Bar Mitzvah age French Jew during the Nazi occupation, cheekily volunteering to be the first in his neighborhood to wear the infamous gold star. You don’t have to be Jewish to admire that, his one heroic act. The latter because he had a gift for charming women, which the movie purports began at a young age and which he indulged throughout his adult life.

   Thus the movie is very French in its focus on amour and very Jewish in how others first saw him, and in how he saw himself for the rest of his life.

   Gainsbourg succeeded in a variety of musical styles, several that are oh so French. However he wasn’t above writing teenybopper songs in the Sixties, from which he achieved major pop success and charmed girls right out of their clothes. A double score as it were. The movie has one besotted groupie dance topless for him while singing along to his hit Baby Pop – a classic scene of pop debauchery if ever there was one.

   Beware, the movie is based on a graphic novel and is quite impressionistic. Its strongly surreal elements include a caricatured alter ego who accompanies the real Gainsbourg around, a theatrical doppelgänger as it were. IOW, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is trés affected. Baby pop it’s not.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Eric Elmosnino is appropriately dark as Gainsbourg – skinny, pasty, haunted behind dark eyes.

   Laetitia Casta plays Brigitte Bardot with something approximating the profound sensuality of the famous sex kitten. The fact that a Victoria’s Secret model like Casta can’t fully convey Bardot’s overwhelming sexiness says more about the superstar than the model.

   Lucy Gordon is lovely and affecting as Jane Birkin, the actress who Gainsbourg married after Bardot. Lovely Lucy committed suicide shortly after shooting this movie. Tragic under any circumstance, she really seemed to be hitting her stride here, proving much more impressive than in Russian Dolls.

   Doug Jones plays the theatrical role of Gainsourg’s caricatured alter ego, La Gueule or The Mug.

   Anna Mouglalis plays famed French bohemian chanteuse Juliette Gréco. As in her Coco Chanel, she’s hardly an expressive actress.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Joann Sfar – who’s a guy, a French guy – idolized Gainsbourg, created a graphic novel about him, then made this film, this movie of it. Stoked.

11. Direction OK 2.5

12. Play Good 3.0

    “Let’s make some poisoned apples.” Now that’s a line.

13. Music Great 4.0

    French Sinatra – pre-rock lounge music, yet addled

    Smooth, clear piano, funky propulsive yet clearly French. Serge could play. Damn could he play.

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.2

    First nude woman appears 11 and a half in. First woman he propositioned was when he was Bar Mitzvah age, then a horndog to the end.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.1

    He was first of all a pianist. Well he was actually a Jew first of all, coming of age in Nazi-occupied Paris.

    Musically and Culturally

    • French Dylan, a Jewish minstrel looming large in what had been a hostile Gentile society.
    • French Leonard Cohen, moody absurdities and non sequiturs.

    Image Tag: The real Gainsbourg & Bardot.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Surreal 2.1

24. Physical Surreal 2.1