Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life: movie review
Despite its title, there is little in “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life” to support its contention that famed French pop singer-songwriter-libertine Serge Gainsbourg (played by heavy-lidded Eric Elmosnino) was any kind of hero.
Writer-director Joann Sfar, a comic-book artist making his directorial debut, has concocted a sloggy fantasia about Gainsbourg’s life featuring such oddities as a giant, hook-nosed puppet that acts as the singer’s alter ego, as well as a parade of showy sequences involving grand Gainsbourg amours Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta) and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon).
His rise from a marginalized Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Paris to his chain-smoking fame as the composer of such Euro-hits as “Je t’Aime … Moi Non Plus” is presented as one long, hallucinatory jag, revealing far less about Gainsbourg, I would imagine, than about Sfar. Grade: C- (Unrated.)
