We’ve already revealed to you plenty of images and a simple video teaser from Joann Sfar’s biopic, about musical French icon, “Serge Gainsbourg: Vie Héroïque” (“A Life Heroic”) and today we have a lot more including the first trailer for the film.
Granted, it’s a French-language trailer, but you don’t need to understand the language to figure out the tenor and tone of the biopic.
The cast of this was is pretty stellar. Eric Elmosnino plays Gainsbourg, Lucy Gordon (who committed suicide earlier this year, RIP) plays his famous chanteuse wife, Jane Birkin (the mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg), former French Supermodel Laetitia Casta stars as Brigitte Bardot, Anna Mouglalis (“Coco Chanel & Stravinsky“) is playing elegant chanson singer Juliette Gréco, actress Sara Forestier (“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer“) will play mousy, French yé-yé singer France Gall and French/Chinese actress Mylène Jampanoï will portray singer actress, Bambou, who was Gainsbourg’s muse and girlfriend near the end of his life (more casting information here).
However, the issue we have here is that this trailer makes the film look like a very traditional and conventional life-spanning biopic from childhood, to nascent fame, to destructive rock n’ roll lifestyle cliches through several paramours and eventually death (if you’re unfamiliar with Gainsbourg who is basically a French national treasure, we documented his life fairly deeply here). In fact it was once more described as, “more of a fantasy than a biopic,” but it really doesn’t look like anything but.
Director Joann Sfar is a comic-book artist and animator and there was talk of incorporating a lot of visual effects into the film, including leaning on the digital animators behind Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” for assistance, but there’s not a trace of anything like that in this trailer. Not that we necessarily desired self-conscious and obvious animation in the film, but we’d be lying if we said this trailer completely dazzled us.
Canadian musician Gonzales (perhaps best known for producing and co-writing many of Feist’s records) is playing the stand-in piano in the film for the lead actor Elmosnino, but Olivier Daviaud is credited with writing the score (there’s a music doc in french below where you can see Gonzales playing).
It doesn’t hit France until January 20, but friends of ours in Paris tell us critic screenings are soonish and will hopefully report back. Early reports had it scheduled for February 2010 in the U.S., but there’s still no word on that and we wouldn’t be surprised if it was pushed back much later. Just a note, it’s a tiny bit NSFW cause you’ll see a boob or too, but it’s mostly harmless unless you’re a total prude. At least the fantastic Gainsbourg track, “Initials BB” is utilized, that would have been a missed opportunity if they hadn’t leveraged such perfectly obvious cinematic song.
Serge Gainsbourg – “”Initials BB” (featuring Brigitte Bardot)
A making of the music clip in French
A making-of clip in French as well.