why she felt “guilty” towards her sick daughter

Died on January 7, 2018, France Gall was the mother of two children, including a daughter suffering from cystic fibrosis. Very caught up in her job, the singer felt a lot of guilt towards her offspring, as we learn in the documentary France Gall – Obviously broadcast on W9 in 2023.

Seven years ago today, France Gall took her last breath, at the age of 70. During his life, the interpreter of Mom is gave birth to two children, fruits of her love affair with Michel Berger: Pauline (born in 1978) and Raphaël (born in 1981). If everything is good for him on the professional level, the artist will, however, have to overcome several personal tragedies. She discovers that her daughter has cystic fibrosis. “They learned after 7-8 months that this child was suffering from an absolutely terrible illness ”, says Bernard de Bosson, ex-president of Warner Music France, in the documentary France Gall – Obviouslydirected by Vincent Guillot and broadcast on W9 in 2023.

But while her daughter's condition is weakening, France Gall continues to live at a frantic pace and travels more and more for her career. “You have to take care of her a lot. France has to travel a lot, sing a lot, record a lot and she's not always there. She feels guilty”, explains Grégoire Collard, former press attaché for France Gall and Michel Berger. “She felt the need to be near Pauline quite frequently. Shooting systematically was much more difficult”, recognizes Bernard de Bosson. So, at the end of the 1980s, France Gall made a radical decision. After a triumphant tour, she announced to Michel Berger that she was stopping singing. “It floored him, because she was his muse all the same”, underlines Grégoire Collard. “Michel Berger experienced it extremely badly, he took it as abandonment, even a form of betrayal.”, adds biographer Yves Bigot.

France Gall: the death of her daughter Pauline, the drama of her life

In 1997, France Gall suddenly lost her daughter Pauline, then aged 19. The young girl died of cystic fibrosis, a rare genetic disease which affects the digestive and respiratory tract and which she had suffered from since childhood. Although Pauline lived with her during the first years of her life, her health deteriorated in the mid-1990s. France Gall then decided to put her career on hold in order to take care of her.

She ended up dying on December 15, 1997, a month after her nineteenth birthday. “Pauline died shortly before the first heart-lung transplants could be carried out, which even saved people of her generation.”, observes Jacques Attali in the W9 documentary, before specifying: “They had a lot of hope about the American attempts, which we talked about together.“The loss of her daughter plunged France Gall into immense grief from which she will not recover.