Gainsbourg - The Man Who Loved Women

The song "Je t`aime...moi non plus" is probably still one of the biggest scandals in music history. In this country, however, only a few know who actually was the man who once breathed this song into the microphone with Jane Birkin. Now Joann Sfar dedicates a very special film biography to Serge Gainsbourg, which not only scores points with good actors, but also with all kinds of original, but also strange visual ideas, and repeatedly evades the usual narrative patterns of usual biopics.

The film traces the life of Serge Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino), from his childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris, through his beginnings as a painter and poet, to the time when he was able to achieve great success with his music and win the hearts of women such as Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta), Juliette Gréco (Anna Mouglalis) and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon). It is a life full of poetry, passion and fame, but also full of fears, scandals and provocation. It is just Serge Gainsbourg...

"Gainsbourg - The Man Who Loved Women" has many very good moments. Joann Sfar, star of the French comic scene, takes elements from the life of Serge Gainsbourg for his feature debut and reassembles them into a story all his own. In any case, Sfar is not interested in delivering a summary of the life and work of his great idol that is as authentic as possible. Rather, he wanted to capture in pictures, in the very special, own way established in his comics, what made Gainsbourg tick as an artist, but also as a human being.

The clearest element of this stylistically unusual production is the ever-appearing "Fresse", Gainsbourg's constant companion, who made it almost impossible for the artist to become happy and content. This feline, scrawny and enormously ugly alter ego, who has accompanied Gainsbourg since childhood, embodies all the fears, the unfulfilled dreams that Serge Gainsbourg has carried with him throughout his life. The "Fresse" is played by Doug Jones, who has already demonstrated his acting skills in the "Hellboy" films, as Silver Surfer in the second "Fantastic Four" flick or in "Pan`s Labyrinth", rendered unrecognizable by the make-up artists and thus borne primarily by his body language.

The French stage actor Eric Elmosnino also proves to be ideally cast, not only bearing a strong resemblance to Serge Gainsbourg on the outside, but also embodying the artist`s brokenness but also his genius and his attraction to women almost perfectly. The casting of Laetitia Casta as Brigitte Bardot also proves to be a coup, Casta embodying a similar sensuality that once made Bardot a sex symbol.

Of Lucy Gordon, convincing as Jane Birkin, one would have liked to see much more, her acting performance showing enormous potential. Unfortunately, Gordon took her own life shortly after filming, which hangs over the film like a slight dark shadow.

Joann Sfar has managed the feat of combining his work as a comic book artist and storyteller with the elements of feature film to create an artist's biography that challenges the viewer while rewarding them with artistic finesse and great actors. Certainly not a film for the masses, but lovers of French arthouse cinema should definitely not miss this work. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp