In this feature film, Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter paints a delicate portrait of her famous mother while revealing a lot of herself.
Cozy atmosphere backstage at a concert hall in Tokyo, Japan. “These little things…” whispers Jane Birkin in a t-shirt, microphone in hand. A little later, Serge Gainsbourg’s former partner and their daughter Charlotte are sitting face to face in front of a bay window overlooking a forest. “ My idea is to be able to look at you like I’ve never dared to look at you, by putting a camera in front of you, it’s almost a pretext to be able to look at you», Explains Charlotte to her mother who listens attentively. And will agree to be followed for six years.
It was in 2021, at the Cannes Film Festival that the actress presented in a special session Jane by Charlotte. The documentary was released in January 2022. Watching it again after the singer’s disappearance, on July 16, 2023, causes a strange impression, as if we were watching a film that was not intended for us. Sincere, tender, intimate, perhaps too much.
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Return to rue de Verneuil
As in Jane B. by Agnès V ., by Agnès Varda (1988), Jane Birkin speaks with frankness. She questions the mother she was: “ Often I behaved like a child mother, girlfriend, perhaps not responsible enough », she says with her famous English accent. Charlotte also reveals herself, remembering her childhood which she compares to those of her sisters, Kate Barry and Lou Doillon. Before discussing the “embarrassed» that she sometimes experiences in front of her own children, Ben, Jo and Alice born from her union with Yvan Attal.
Jane Birkin never recovered from the death of her first daughter (she died in 2013 following a fall from the fourth floor at her Paris home). She talks about her absence in front of Charlotte’s lens. “I haven’t thought enough of you, of you and Lou she whispers.Shouldn’t I have done otherwise, about everything?…. With tragedies like Kate, you remake history…” Jane Birkin can’t watch images of Kate as a child. “It’s like another life, a bit. »
“I’ve been getting older for two years already », Estimates the actress, who appears more at ease in her refuge, the family home, in Normandy, than on tour. “I haven’t had any illnesses that hurt, I’ve been lucky… I have to think about putting things in your name before I die… “, she confides.
From “little nothing” to “little nothing”, she explains her concept of order and why she did not perform on stage sooner. Tells about his first sleeping pills, his dogs,“gifts from heaven”.In a second part, mother and daughter go together to Serge Gainsbourg’s house, rue de Verneuil, in 7e district of Paris. “Nothing has changed », says Jane Birkin, who has not been back there for thirty years. “Yes, it seems strange to me, it’s such another life . »
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Everything has remained unchanged since the artist’s death in 1999, from the food in the refrigerator to the dust-covered cans. Charlotte explains that she plans to transform the place into a museum. “I both wanted to keep everything and at the same time forget everything », observe-t-elle. « Yes it’s worth opening it, it’s a gem», replies Jane, disturbed. “The film is as much about her (Charlotte) as it is about me», noted the singer at the time of the release. She was just saying.
