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Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)
2010, France
Joann Sfar

That Joann Sfar’s Serge Gainsbourg film was originally planned to star the famed musician’s own daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, as her father makes it difficult to imagine that, when Charlotte dropped out, anything or anyone that could have successfully taken her place. Sure, the casting of a woman in the role of an iconic, enigmatic singer/songwriter had been done (successfully) in Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan pic I’m Not There., with Cate Blanchett, but the possibility of seeing Charlotte Gainsbourg in drag as her late father, seducing and romancing an actor playing her mother, would have been as decidedly pervy and enticing as Charlotte’s own teenage duet with daddy, “Lemon Incest.” So it came as a bit of a surprise (to me, at least) that Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), sans Charlotte, is actually quite good.

Certainly Eric Elmosnino’s channeling of Monsieur Gainsbourg, which won him the Best Actor prize at the Césars, is impressive, but a solid impersonation does not a good film make. Instead, it’s the bolder choices made by Sfar, best known as a comic artist, in his first foray as a filmmaker that elevate Vie héroïque, which he adapted from his own graphic novel, beyond your factory-line Hollywood biopic. Sfar too won the César for Best First Film. Throughout the film, Serge–whether played as an adult by Elmosnino or as the child Lucien Ginsburg by Kacey Mottet Klein (of Ursula Meier’s Home)–is accompanied by a nightmarish, computer-animated version of himself, which serves as a visually exciting and narratively clever device.

 

Sfar also excels at one of the film’s more difficult tasks: introducing the many famed women of Gainsbourg’s life. It’s unfortunate that the two women who get the most screen time, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, are the least convincing performances in the film, despite both Laetitia Casta and Lucy Gordon’s strong physical resemblances to their respective characters. However, each of the women represented in the film enter the film explosively, almost the way I would imagine would befit the introduction of a series of recognized villains in a well-known comic book or video game. Villains these women, of course, are not, but they each provide their own individual challenges to our hero.

 

The more inspired performances come from Yolande Moreau as Fréhel, Sara Forestier as France Gall, Mylène Jampanoï as Bambou, and especially Anna Mouglalis as Juliette Gréco. Greco’s entrance is the most astonishing: a single shot of the opening her eyes to the sound of a thunder clap, as if she were waking from a hundred-year slumber. There’s also a funny, cartoonish cameo from Claude Chabrol (in his final appearance on the silver screen) as the record producer to whom Gainsbourg brings his new version of “Je t’aime, moi non plus” with Birkin filling in on vocals for Bardot. Again, it’s all about the eyes. Vie héroïque is probably the best biopic of Serge Gainsbourg that could have been made without Charlotte, and for that, Sfar should be commended.

With: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones, Kacey Mottet Klein, Razvan Vasilescu, Dinara Droukarova, Anna Mouglalis, Mylène Jampanoï, Sara Forestier, Yolande Moreau, Philippe Katerine, Deborah Grall, Ophélia Kolb, Claude Chabrol, François Morel, Joann Sfar

The 2010 Rendez-vous with French Cinema

The 15th annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance, was announced recently, though the line-up isn't much to get excited over. Rendez-vous with French Cinema usually highlights the previous year's Gallic offerings that hadn't already premiered at the New York Film Festival. Last year's series screened the new films from Claire Denis, Agnès Godard, Claude Chabrol, Costa-Gavras, André Téchiné and Benoît Jacquot. While there are some big(-ish) names represented this year like François Ozon, Michel Gondry, Christophe Honoré and Claude Miller, the line-up as a whole doesn't read as "thrilling" by any stretch (keep in mind I haven't actually seen any of the films yet). On the bright side, Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] will make its US premiere at the festival (and, really, I am quite anxious to see the new Ozon and a couple of the others).

Jules Dassin's The Law [La loi], a French/Italian co-production from 1959 with Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri and Yves Montand, is the only feature more than a year old that screens this year. Recently remastered in a new 35mm print, The Law will make the rounds theatrically and on DVD later this year from Oscilloscope Pictures. Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of the Cannes Film Festival, will also bring a collection of newly restored shorts from the Lumière brothers. The selection of short films will include a film called The Girls, the directorial debut of actress Anna Mouglalis. Of the 2009 features, four currently have US distribution (with Lorber Films announcing their acquisition of L'armée du crime earlier today). The complete line-up is below, but click here for short synopses, screening dates and online ticketing.

- À l'origine [In the Beginning], d. Xavier Giannoli, w. François Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos, Gérard Depardieu
- L'affaire Farewell [Farewell], d. Christian Carion, w. Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Fred Ward, Willem Dafoe, Diane Kruger, Benno Fürmann
- L'armée du crime [The Army of Crime], d. Robert Guédiguian, Lorber Films, w. Simon Abkarian, Virginie Ledoyen, Robinson Stévenin, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Yann Trégouët, Adrien Jolivet
- Les beaux gosses [The French Kissers], d. Riad Sattouf, w. Noémie Lvovsky, Valeria Golino, Irène Jacob, Emmanuelle Devos, Marjane Satrapi, Christophe Vandevelde
- Le bel âge [Restless / L'insurgée], d. Laurent Perreau, w. Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Eric Caravaca
- L'épine dans le cœur [The Thorn in the Heart], d. Michel Gondry, Oscilloscope Pictures
- La famille Wolberg [The Wolberg Family], d. Axelle Ropert, w. Serge Bozon
- Le hérisson [The Hedgehog], d. Mona Achache, w. Josiane Balasko
- Huit fois debout [8 Times Up], d. Xabi Molia, w. Julie Gayet, Denis Podalydès, Frédéric Bocquet
- Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante [I'm Glad That My Mother Is Alive], d. Claude Miller, Nathan Miller
- La loi [The Law], d. Jules Dassin, Oscilloscope Pictures, w. Gina Lollobrigida, Yves Montand, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri, Pierre Brasseur
- Mademoiselle Chambon, d. Stéphane Brizé, w. Vincent Lindon, Sandrine Kiberlain
- Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser [Making Plans for Lena], d. Christophe Honoré, w. Chiarra Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Jean-Marc Barr, Louis Garrel, Julien Honoré
- OSS 117: Rio de répond plus [OSS 117: Lost in Rio], d. Michel Hazanavicius, w. Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler
- Rapt, d. Lucas Belvaux, w. Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, Alex Descas
- Le refuge [The Refuge], d. François Ozon, Strand Releasing, w. Isabelle Carré, Melvil Poupaud
- Les regrets, d. Cédric Kahn, w. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Yvan Attal
- Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape], d. Alain Guiraudie, w. Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi
- Welcome, d. Philippe Lioret, Film Movement, w. Vincent Lindon

The Decade List: La vie nouvelle (2002)

La vie nouvelle - dir. Philippe Grandrieux

Like another notorious French film from 2002, Gaspar Noé's Irrèversible, Philippe Grandrieux's La vie nouvelle, with its schizophrenic camera and piercing audio frequency, provokes a dangerous sensation. Like his previous Sombre, La vie nouvelle pulsates like a tremor, as if we're entering a universe after some unnamed, unmentioned nuclear disaster. While it's easy to make visual association to familiar images of horror like Night of the Living Dead when the film opens on a dark pasture with zombie-like peasants, Salò; or The 120 Days of Sodom while a group of Russian criminals strip a group of beautiful youths naked or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me as characters malevolently scream into the air, Grandrieux's vision is wholly unique. (I tried not to make the Lynch comparison, as that seems to be everyone's ignorant go-to when comparing the dark and experimental, but it's hard not to recall Killer Bob heckling to the sky as he kills Laura Palmer.)

Melania (Anna Mouglalis, an actress I'd shrugged off as bland until I saw this) is one of those Salò youths, stripped first of her clothes and then of her hair before entering some sort of sex trade. Seymour (Zachary Knighton) is the Yankee teenager, somehow wrapped up in this seedy world, who wants to save her, even if he can't get an erection while they're fucking and even if he isn't sure why he wants to help her. Other than these details, not much else is revealed.

While someone like Gaspar Noé's motives are blindingly clear, Grandrieux's are not. Though I risk delegating the film into easy descriptive sectors as a result of my inability to fully grasp it, La vie nouvelle could certainly fall into the broad spectrum of a mood piece, but more than that, it's an experience. Reading about Lars Von Trier's Antichrist was sort of the push I needed to write about this film, as it's comparably divisive... though with much less fanfare. Some have called the film hollow, a statement I typically find to be prematurely dismissive. I won't totally reject the idea that Grandrieux may have nothing concrete to say, but saying nothing in such an arresting way isn't without some merit.

That is why I return to the idea of La vie nouvelle as an experience, unfortunately one that very few people outside of France have had. Watching the film is an absolutely unnerving undertaking, nearly impossible to endure without a lump in one's throat. It's a frightening vision of a slightly recognizable hell, where tainted innocence attempts to latch onto its infected cognate in hopes to reclaim what they know cannot be salvaged in themselves. La vie nouvelle is nearly designed to elicit (and aggravate) a response from the viewer, and while those responses aren't the most pleasing, it certainly does its job.

With: Zachary Knighton, Anna Mouglalis, Marc Barbé, Zsolt Nagy, Raoul Dantec, Vladimir Zintov
Screenplay: Philippe Grandrieux, Eric Vuillard
Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine
Music: Étant Donnés, Josh Pearson
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 8 September 2002 (Toronto International Film Festival)