Film Reviews

Gainsbourg

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• Details: France / 130mins (15A).

Biopics usually take one of two approaches - they are either straightforward birth-to-death stories or, as the recent Bob Dylan's I'm Not There and Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose demonstrate, they mess about with the formula. Gainsbourg, tackling the life of the artist/musician/lover/drinker/smoker from the inside out, falls into the latter category and the arty approach hampers the audience from getting to know the man, or what he was about.
That style is kept at bay from the outset, however, as Gainsbourg kicks off in normal biopic mode - a young Gainsbourg, or Lucien Ginsberg as he's known, grows up learning the piano in Nazi-occupied Paris. A confident and odd kid, Lucien gleefully marches down to the local government offices to pick up his Jewish Star while his fellow Jews reluctantly queue outside. He's got the gift of the gab, assuring a model in his art class that he wasn't spying on her naked body, but that he wanted to catch her in a more natural pose.
But director Sfar forgets about this lead in, as his grown up Gainsbourg (now played by dead ringer Eric Elmonsnino) morphs into a shy man, paranoid of his ugly face, and remains for the most part holed up in his dingy apartment learning the guitar. Haunted by his alter ego, La Gueule (Doug Jones), a monster figure that's an exaggeration of how Gainsbourg sees himself - massive nose, elongated fingers, ill-fitting suits, narcissistic - minces around, encouraging him to be true to himself. Urged by La Gueule, Gainsbourg dumps painting and throws himself into music…
Director Sfar's background in comic strips (it's from his graphic novel the film is adapted) might explain the stop-start nature of Gainsbourg, as the film is nothing more than a series of sequences - each sequence totally divorced from its neighbours - thrown together without thought to the overall result, and Sfar struggles to stitch them together. The film's biggest problem, however, is that it is shorn of everything that made Gainsbourg Gainsbourg. The audience is never privy to why beautiful women, including movie starlets, throw themselves at his feet or why his music caused such a furore. Sfar assumes that people know why, and refuses to explore it.
But Gainsbourg (Vie héroique) is always interesting to look at, as Sfar's visual sense can't be faulted. Elmosnino, backed up by a fun turn by Doug Jones, lends the biopic a certain unpredictable edginess.

Review by Gavin Burke