Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
2010 · Directed by Joann Sfar
Original language: French
- drama
The story
A glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.
What it’s like
Smoky, stylised and theatrical, with a painterly cartoon-tinged look: saturated colour, exaggerated sets, and a camera that loves a cigarette-lit face in a dim nightclub. The mood swings from dreamlike childhood memory in wartime Paris to sun-drenched 1960s Gainsbourg, with jazz, chanson and pop arrangements that give the film its rhythm, and a few languid beach sequences that feel like warm afternoon haze. Its vibe is bittersweet, mischievous and sensual, with a flamboyant melancholy under the playful surface. It suits a late evening with a drink, a music-lover's weekend, or a curious night in with French pop on the mind. The pacing is episodic and loose, following a restless, self-sabotaging man through love affairs, provocation and artistic reinvention, with his relationships with parents, muses and his own image at the centre. Intensity is moderate: some wartime imagery, brief menace, frank sexuality and nudity, and some drug and alcohol use, but no sustained gore. It is for people who enjoy musical biopics with a surreal streak and a taste for Parisian style.
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