Sitting by mistake on one of the freshly painted benches in a London park, a woman with a bob cut utters a shrill cry, masked by the noise of the tourists who surround her. With the phone screwed to her ear, she learns with horror of the disappearance of the woman with whom she shared everything for nearly sixty years. Jane Birkin is gone. On the tips of her always bare feet, discreetly, in the night of this scorching month of July 2023.
The day before, Gabrielle Crawford was still at his bedside. Weakened by illness, devastated by the end of a life deprived of her eldest daughter and the men who loved her, the sixties icon no longer left her Parisian apartment, barely decorated with a few old newspapers and records. “She promised me she was fine, called me a taxi to the airport without asking and forced me to go back to my home in the UK to rest,” Crawford says, his voice tight.
Their last conversation, “long and deep”, punctuated by tears and deep regrets hitherto unacknowledged, is for Jane B. the final gift given to her confidante of great evenings, her comrade of the hospital corridors. “His fear was of becoming a burden. The evening of her death was the only one where she had fired her nurse, where she did not want anyone to stay with her,” she maintains without clearly responding to the rumors surrounding the “voluntary departure” and the sudden isolation of the singer, whispered by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon during a joint interview on RTL. “It’s nobody’s business. I prefer to focus on the artist, the lover, my better half, continues “sister Gabrielle”, as the Gainsbourg muse affectionately nicknamed her. I owe him that. »
Doubts and prejudices
In the gray streets of swinging London, the two young women dance the jive, down beers and flirt without embarrassment. One is a disc jockey in smoky underground nightclubs, the other is an actress, attending early morning casting calls. Met during a joint photo shoot for a fashion magazine in 1964, Gabrielle and Jane quickly forged a bond strengthened by a series of shoots combining the cinematographic eye of the first’s husband and the second’s talent as a tragedian.
Jane Birkin, Gabrielle Crawford and her family in the 1960s. Photo DR
“In parallel with our discreet beginnings, my partner Michael introduced me to living myths, legends which were, in the depths of the 1960s, only brilliant dreamers, soul men as successful as there were everywhere,” points out Crawford, referring to the brief roommate of her couple with John Lennon, who also toured with the father of her children. “He sang on the beaches, spoke of his loves and misfortunes,” she continues with the regret of not having “been able to capture more photos” of the member of the Beatles, already in love with Yoko Ono. “It was especially during this phase that I realized the infinite distress that exists among all the giants of this world,” underlines the apprentice photographer who also tries to save Birkin from a stormy marriage with John Barry, a driver renowned for his professional and personal standards. “Nothing positive can be said about this individual. He destroyed her, made her doubt, broke all her confidence in herself,” confides the one who first supported the ingenue in her divorce before helping her rebuild herself far from the tumults of a capital British, abandoning his assumed frivolity for an austerity contrary to his artistic impulses. “Fortunately she got to know Serge quickly after this chaotic episode. »
Forced apoliticism
At the turn of the 1970s, Gainsbourg, humiliated and lonely, ended his relationship with Brigitte Bardot at a time when she was seriously considering retiring from the world of show business at the dawn of her forties. Still fragile, Jane Birkin then left London for Paris, driven by the hope of establishing herself on film sets marked by transgressions under Pompidou. Between the lost souls, “no love at first sight”, confirms Gabrielle Crawford. Both in the casting of Slogana forgettable turnip were it not for its distribution, the twenty-something is reluctant to appear with the provocateur with a checkered reputation, 18 years her senior. “He immediately loved her madly. He loved her so much that he made her forget everything that anyone had previously accused of her,” adds the photographer, also witness to the “meeting of the feminine ideals of the 20th century”, when Bardot and Birkin, the ex and his replacement, agree to film together under the leadership of Roger Vadim in 1972 in the soft-erotic Don Juan. “It was an era where these glittery circles were not infected by jealousy and malice,” says Gabrielle Crawford, while emphasizing the blatant political disagreements between the duo of icons – differences that they never addressed.
Known since the opening of the third millennium for her progressive, often avant-garde positions, Jane B. has however long been forced to conceal her political preferences. “Gainsbourg didn’t want her to get too involved in this area. For him, she had to remain an inaccessible doll, a glamorous muse under his direction. He forbade her to talk about it,” recalls the friend of the pair, busy closely following a certain Margaret Thatcher. Close to Carol, the daughter of the Conservative Prime Minister, Gabrielle Crawford managed to convince the latter to pose in front of her lens, to crack a little her iron armor.
Margaret Thatcher photographed by Gabrielle Crawford. Photo DR
“She was much warmer than it seemed, at least in the private sphere,” claims the regular at 10 Downing Street throughout the erratic eighties. Simultaneously with this restrictive professional rapprochement, Birkin gradually emancipates himself, visits Mitterrand in jeans and sneakers and no longer hides his concerns in the face of the electoral breakthroughs of the extreme right in France. In 1980, she left the sulphurous, alcohol-soaked musician and composer who became Gainsbarre. “A heartbreak” for the lover of her texts oscillating between melancholy and sensuality, but a necessary step to “express her hidden liberalism, her desire to “finally being able to make her own choices,” reveals the godmother of Jane’s three daughters.
A bittersweet journey
Jane B.’s final act was written, as she herself notes in her two-volume Memoirs, over more than thirty years. Artistically accomplished, nominated three times for the César, multi-awarded and then honored at the Victoires de la Musique, the little Englishwoman with the singing accent is, in France, perceived as a modern and timeless symbol of femininity, post-Gainsbourg. “However, she did not move away from it, she was simply more discreet so as not to disturb Bambou, her ultimate partner,” points out Gabrielle Crawford, faithful companion of the physical suffering and successive bereavements of the native of Marylebone.
For the record
Between Jane Birkin and Lebanon, “pride, anger and tabbouleh so green”
“Serge passed away on March 2, 1991, three days before Jane’s father and a few months before Jane was diagnosed with cancer which, although initially treated, would later return to haunt us all,” mentions the portraitist. Not taking her eyes off her, she begins to follow the eternal hippie on the roads of the globe, not containing her feverish energy between two chemotherapy sessions. Of the road trips on the Asian continent to award ceremonies and climate demonstrations across the Atlantic, including this concert in Beirut where he was informed of the birth of one of his granddaughters, Birkin channels his aspirations by having little fun, by working constantly. At least until that fateful evening of December 11, 2013. “Everything passes, everything is easy, except the loss of a child. We can’t get through that,” Crawford maintains, moved, preferring to “detach” herself from the death of Kate Barry, victim of a fall from the fourth floor of her building in the 16th arrondissement.
“Jane continued her life, with difficulty but passionately,” concludes her “better half”, author of It’s Jane, Birkin Jane (ed. Actes Sud), the writing of which began six months after the death of the interpreter of I love you, Me neitherJuly 16, 2023. “It’s not the same without her. The coffees we shared no longer have the same taste, the shows we watched no longer have the same rhythm, the laughter and tears no longer have the same intensity. These 56 years of friendship, I have cherished them in silence, today I share them. »
Sitting by mistake on one of the freshly painted benches in a London park, a woman with a bob cut utters a shrill cry, masked by the noise of the tourists who surround her. With the phone screwed to her ear, she learns with horror of the disappearance of the woman with whom she shared everything for nearly sixty years. Jane Birkin is gone. Always on the tips of his toes…
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