Nice. Everyone really looks the part. Here’s Eric Elmosnino as Serge Gainsbourg, Laetitia Casta as Brigitte Bardot, Lucy Gordon (who committed suicide earlier this year, RIP) as Jane Birkin and the back of Anna Mouglalis as Juliette Gréco in Joann Sfar’s upcoming Gainsbourg biopic, “Vie Heroique” (“A Heroic Life”). Though note, one report said the film was called, “Je t’Aime Moi Non Plus,” but that’s the name of a Birkin song and even though they were married, and Gainsbourg wrote it, it does seem a little odd. Though as the peanut gallery does correctly note, Gainsbourg did write the song originally for Brigitte Bardot and it was also the title of the 1975 movie Gainsbourg wrote & directed with Jane Birkin & Joe Dallesandro in the leads which adds a layer of confusion. [ed. we know this trust us, but it was a late Friday night, thanks for the prodding].
Should we back up? Surely you know who Serge Gainsbourg is, the philandering French sleazebag pop singer who thrilled France with his scandalous songs (some about incest, sung with his daughter Charlotte), lifestyle (a total drunk and Lothario) and insouciant joie de vivre (he told Whitney Houston he wanted to fuck her life on French television much to the amusement of the entire TV audience and nation).
Anyhow, yes, a biopic of the notorious baroque-pop singer is being made, it’s coming out in 2010 and the film will be Universal Pictures first foreign language film and will be the directorial debut by French comic book artist Joann Sfar (and note he’s promised some animation from the team that helped create “Pan’s Labyrinth” which should be incredibly interesting). Various famous female french starlets crossed Gainsbourg’s life like Bardot, Greco, Birkin, Francoise Hardy, France Gall and Catherine Deneuve so presumably we’ll see film incarnations of all of them (and some of them have already been casted, we did a pretty in-depth casting story last last year).
And from the looks of these pics, the film will follow Gainsbourg as a young songwriter for hire (as he’s seen with Greco), to the grayer, more sozzled and ashen version of the fallen singer we all love to read about. There’s even a pic of Gainsbourg recording his excellent 1979 reggae album Aux Armes et Cætera with dub superstars Sly & Robbie which seems to suggest this picture is really going in deep historically.
Canadian singer, talented multi-instrumentalist Gonzales — who composed many of the hit songs for Feist — is a modern day Gainsbourg sans the debauchery, so it’s rather perfect that he’ll be doing some of the music. The film is set for a February 2010 release in Europe and hopefully that means the U.S. release is not far behind. [GainsbourgLeFilm/World of Kane]