Relatively unknown American actress Lucy Gordon (small part in “Spider-Man 3”) will play muse and wife, Jane Birkin in the upcoming biopic of debaucherous French music icon Serge Gainsbourg.
Tentatively titled, “Vie Heroique” (Heroic Life),” the film will be Universal Pictures first foreign language film and will be the directorial debut by French comic book artist Joann Sfar.
Already cast in the film which starts shooting in January is Eric Elmosnino as Gainsbourg, Laetitia Casta as Brigitte Bardot and Mylene Jampanoi as the eccentric singer’s late-life muse, Bambou (deeper casting info here).
Birkin and Gainsbourg met and fell in love on the set of the 1969 film, “Slogan.” So smitten was the French iconoclast, he quickly divorced his older wife and married the far younger Birkin; a heavily ironic move considering Gainsbourg’s character does the exact same thing with Birkin in the film.
The duo went on to create many French pop song classics incuding, the international hit, “Je t’aime moi non plus.” Choosing an actress to play Birkin was one of the last major casting pieces in the film, but ostensibly, actors still need to be found for the roles of ingenue Catherine Deneuve, French New Wave icon Anna Karina (she co-starred and sang in a the musical comedy Anna” with Gainsbourg, he wrote her songs), musicians Jacques Dutronc and Francoise Hardy, and Gainsbourg’s daughter, Charlotte (all people who were prominent figures in Gainsbourg’s life at one point or another). The film is expected in French theaters in 2010, and hopefully not much longer afterwards in the U.S.
Here’s the “Slogan” trailer once more. The title track is fantastique!