Review: Gainsbourg

Joann Sfar’s quirky new biopic shows us that Gainsbourg never lost his yellow star.

Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)
Director: Joann Sfar
Starring: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones
Released by:Hopscotch

Comic book/graphic novel adaptations have been fashionable for a while now. First there were the obvious ones, the DC and Marvel films of the 90s like Batman and Superman and the Spiderman and X-Men franchises that took the trend into the 2000s. Then The Watchmen and V for Vendetta brought graphic novels to arthouse cinema, and now, Joann Sfar has taken the form into biopic territory with the adaptation of his biographical graphic novel Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque).

The film, about the life of legendary French musician Serge Gainsbourg (played by Eric Elmosnino) is structured like any great bildungsroman: boy is born into difficult situation, boy learns of his prodigious talent, boy falls in love with girl (or several, in this case), boy reaches some success, and, inevitably, boy experiences his downfall. But this time, Sfar’s vision gives this old tale a twist.

Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg to Russian Jewish parents, spent his childhood in Nazi occupied France. The film details his strict upbringing – his humble neighbourhood; being sent to a music school in the country to hide from the Nazis; his father’s forcing him to play the piano, though all he wanted to do was draw – and from the beginning establishes the young Gainsbourg to be an eccentric and imaginative figure whose art would continue to dominate his being.

Gainsbourg’s women are depicted as beautiful but fleeting figures that flit in and out of his life, usually as a result of his distractedness, infidelity, or drunken abandon of his welfare. The film’s rendering of the affairs deliver exactly what a Gainsbourg, Birkin or Bardot fan is looking for: a feeling of spontaneity, round-the-clock lovemaking and superbly directed rock n’ roll irreverence.

The real beauty of the film, though, is in its departure from convention. There is a sensation of phases that occur throughout Gainsbourg’s life, rather than explicit transitions and heavy-handed plotting. What connects these threads so superbly is the character of the ‘mug’, drawn directly from Sfar’s graphic novel (which, notably, has the subtitle ‘heroic life’).

‘La Gueule’ (‘mug’ or ‘maw’) is an imaginary puppet-like character with a sinister charm and an enormous hook nose that Gainsbourg invents when he is a child. Through its fantastical quality, this surreal trope establishes Gainsbourg’s jewishness as both a hindrance and an inspiration. His mug follows him throughout his life, corrupting him and forcing to paint and make music, and rarely allowing him to sleep. His mug is his burden, both creative and cultural, who first appeared when his yellow star was pinned on to his childhood jacket, and who reappears during the most turbulent moments of his life.

This is the aspect of this legendary figure that Sfar nails so brilliantly. Rather than depicting Gainsbourg as a drunken, folk-rock star, as so many directors would, Sfar focuses on the lesser known aspects of the musician’s life: his insatiable creative force and his conflicted relationships with his loves, his culture and his family. Sfar’s boldly idiosyncratic biopic shows us that Gainsbourg could never really abandon his mug, or his yellow star.