Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque (2010)

Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque is a French-American film first released in 2010, directed by Joann Sfar.  The film stars Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones and Anna Mouglalis.  It has also been released under the title: Gainsbourg.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Who would have thought that Lucien Ginsburg, a young boy growing up in Nazi occupied Paris, would one day become one of the greatest cultural icons of his generation?  Under his adopted named Serge Gainsbourg, he would be a symbol of 1960s liberation, forging a flamboyant and successful career as a poet, musician and actor.  But in his personal life he would be tormented by private angst and his tumultuous love affairs...

Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque isn’t so much your traditional biopic as an unbridled celebration of a great artist, as vibrant and mercurial as the man it portrays.  This extravagant debut feature from Joann Sfar, best known as one of France’s leading comic book artists, has little interest in telling Gainsbourg’s story as it was but instead presents it as it seemed, a flurry of activity defined by notoriety, fast living and some legendary art.   Rather than dispel the myth, the film perpetuates and amplifies it, rendering the personality of Gainsbourg even more complex and mystifying.  The film’s original French title is presumably intended to be ironic, since Gainsbourg’s heroism extends no further than learning to live with a face that looks as if it collided with a bus.

Serge Gainsbourg was himself a film director of some ability, albeit one with a penchant for the controversial (as his 1976 erotic drama Je t’aime moi non plus demonstrates).   As uninhibited as he was in his various artistic endeavours, it is doubtful that even Gainsbourg could have made a film that is as wild and rough-edged as this quasi-biography.  Yet, whilst the film does embrace arty excess a little too often, it does evoke the character of Gainsbourg and his art, and brilliantly so.  Structurally the film is a mess, cutting and pasting episodes from its subject’s life much as child might assemble a collage from a collection of glossy magazines.  But, in spite of this, it does hold our attention and manages to portray Gainsbourg as a three-dimensional individual, showing us both the good and bad sides of his character.  We see the familiar enfant terrible, the hedonist who could not help attracting notoriety, but we also see the other Gainsbourg, the man who was haunted by his own demons and who, at times, genuinely did suffer for his art.

Serge Gainsbourg was such a unique personality that you might think it inconceivable that any actor could play him convincingly on the screen.  Yet Eric Elmosnino does just this, not merely resembling the legendary singer and closely imitating his mannerisms, but also broadcasting something of his charisma and character.  Elmosnino’s portrayal captures the essence of Gainsbourg, the man and his art, and brings solidity to a film that could so easily have ended up as spectacle of vacuous artistic posturing. 

The film’s initial release in France in January 2010 was overshadowed by the death of Elmosnino’s co-star, Lucy Gordon, who played Gainsbourg’s long-term partner Jane Birkin.  The 28-year-old English actress committed suicide just a few weeks after completing work on this film.

© James Travers 2010

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