Many people know about Serge Gainsbourg from his scandalous recording he did with girlfriend Jane Birkin in 1969 called “Je t’aime…moi non plus,” in which the then-couple sang and writhed on vinyl and got banned in many countries for their efforts.
For years (and even now in many ways), Gainsbourg was France’s leading celebrity, an all-media king proficient in singing, songwriting, novel writing, acting and directing. Then, of course, there were the high-profile women—scores of them, ooo-la-la!—including Birkin, Brigitte Bardot and “chanson” singer Juliette Greco among them. And let’s not forget the heavy drinking, the thorny TV talk show appearances and the chain smoking, which eventually led to his death at the age of 53 in 1991.
Joann Sfar, the French comic illustrator behind the acclaimed graphic novels The Rabbi’s Cat, Klezmer: Tales from the Wild East and the Dungeon fantasy series, makes his directorial debut with Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, a look at the Franco-Jewish entertainer from a childhood during the Nazi occupation of France to his attention-getting stunts and artistic world to his death.
But this is not your typical biopic. Here, Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino) confers with an imaginary big-nosed, large-fingered creation that looks like a sports mascot version of Gainsbourg himself (played, oddly enough, by Doug Bradley, “Pinhead” of Hellraiser fame). The film is anecdotal, filled with flights of fancy like musical interludes and an animated sequence that exists more to delve into his subject’s psyche than to get the facts right in his story.
The 40-year-old Sfar, who shares certain similarities to Gainsbourg—being raised Jewish, possessing an early affection for painting, and being prolific and proficient in various forms of media and the arts—recently spoke to Movie FanFare from Paris, where he was working on projects ranging from a new live-action feature film to adapting his Little Vampire children’s stories into a 3-D animated feature.
MovieFanFare: Why is your film called Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life?
Joann Sfar: This was a quote from Gainsbourg himself. He was so selfish—he was the hero of his own stories, even if he was a louse and a womanizer. In reality, he was very shy and fragile and always pretending to be (Mad Men’s) Don Draper.
MFF: Were you always interested in Serge Gainsbourg, and, after making a film about him, do you view him differently today?
JS: I was always interested in him, as was my whole country. But my parents did not want me to follow him. I had observant Jewish parents. There are nice but not funny. So I did follow him anyway. On TV, I saw this Jewish guy with Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin and I figured, “Maybe there is no God, but there is hope somewhere.”
MFF: Your film was warmly received in France. Were you surprised because of your offbeat portrayal of Gainsbourg?
JS: People in France love him, and that’s what he wanted, so the film’s success is not surprising to me. Nobody considers my movie provocative in any way. What’s surprising is that Serge Gainsbourg is now the symbol of French middlebrow, and he was always thought to be scandalous. So that was kind of surprising.
MFF: Why did you decide to add the fanciful things to the film?
JS: I definitely didn’t want to do a biopic, but more of a musical. I have a real affection for horror and fantasy, so I wanted to mix in some elements of these. I hope to make a horror film set in the 19th century at some point.
MFF: Have his lovers Brigitte Bardot or Jane Birkin—or Charlotte Gainsbourg, his daughter with Birkin—seen the film?
JS: They’d been very kind to me during the making of the movie, and they gave me the rights to the music. But they didn’t really want to see the movie. They wanted to be out of the loop.
Charlotte was crucial to the project. Originally, I wanted her to play her father. She said it was too painful. She wanted to make it like she was going to kill the dragon, but to him he was like Santa Claus, so it was difficult. We forgive everything about this guy, because he was such a big child. He was so self-indulgent—or maybe this is all about his charm. I don’t understand him and that’s what I like.
MFF: Can you tell us about the rehearsal and shooting schedule?
JS: We did five months of rehearsals, most on a stage, and we shot for 14 weeks.
MFF: Your lead actor Eric Elmosnino bears a striking resemblance to Serge Gainsbourg.
JS: Not only does he look like him, but he’s very good at getting old. Sometimes he had to be young in the morning and old in the evening.
MFF: What was the most difficult part of making the film? The easiest part?
JS: It was tough to figure out who to focus on because everything we depicted had to take place in a short period of time. This was the hardest part. The most meaningful stuff to me was when he was young and how important it was for the country to love him, and when he could get it, how he wanted it to be about women to love him. He was a macho character, but the women he was with were always stronger than him.
MFF: You have a completed animated film version of your graphic novel The Rabbi’s Cat in the can, and we will hopefully see it in theaters here in the coming months. . Will you continue to work as a comic book artist and director?
JS: I love the fact I am being six months alone working and six months of working with others. I will continue to work in animation and comics as well as live action.
MFF: Can you tell us about screenwriting method?
JS: Everything is done through doing a comic book. I wrote a graphic novel using his quotes. Nearly all the text in the film comes from Serge Gainsbourg’s quotes. Not all of it is true, because he was drunk a lot. I still don’t know how to write a screenplay. I use the tools I am most comfortable with.
MFF: Lucy Gordon, who plays Jane Birkin in the film, killed herself shortly after completing her role. How did that affect you and the film?
JS: Fifteen days after we ended, she died. The whole editing process was tainted by her death. She was the most joyful person that I have ever met. We lost a friend.