There's Something About Serge
There he was.
He was easy enough to pick out. Even in the grim grimy-greasy jaundiced not-so-flattering subterranean Métro light. Oh, it was him all right––no doubt about it. Or a fabulously finely-formed facsimile thereof. His profile, pitched in a precisely preconceived profile of a pose, the enormous ear, the prominent nose. His chin––smooth, not yet his signature unshaven chin––juts serenely, sagely, slightly upturned. The lips, sensual-soft, poised in mid-exhale. As if he were singing. Or smoking. No mistaking him, this finely-formed facsimile of one of France’s most famously infamous artists, one of the Fifth Republic’s most notorious agents provocateurs, the man who flipped la chanson française upside down and inside out and right side in and right side up all over again. He was Serge Gainsbourg. Or at least he was meant to be. Only, come to think of it, on closer inspection, he wasn’t singing. Only, on closer inspection, come to think of it, he was smoking. But where was the damn smoke? And the cigarette? What in hell had happened to Serge Gainsbourg’s cigarette?
Because the thing about this country, the thing about France, is that you can’t be here, really be Here––as in exist within and live with and operate amidst and integrate and mingle incognito among the natives––without learning about Serge, and sometimes this means you learn more, so much more, than you might care to know. And the first thing you learn is this: Serge sure liked his cigarettes. Or, more specifically, his Gitanes. And Serge without his cigarette, Serge sans Gitanes, well, it’s like the proverbial birthday sans proverbial cake. Like the proverbial cake without the icing. Like the proverbial ice cream sundae without the cherry on the proverbial top. Like Bastille Day without the proverbial parade along the Champs-Élysées, or worse, a proverbial parade featuring only Sarkozy and no runaway horses from the Republican Guard to make it all better. In a word, in three words, in a phrase: it’s just wrong. All of it.
In other words: What was the R.A.T.P. thinking?
That’s Régie autonome des transports parisiens, in case you didn’t know. The men who man the Métro. (And the autobus.) In all fairness, in all truth, to be honest, to be frank, the R.A.T.P. doesn’t typically think of much else than going on strike. Or raising their rates. Or raising their rates while on strike. But still. . .
They removed, they extracted, they air-brushed, they photoshopped, they snatched away Serge’s Gitane. They metaphorically crushed it into an art-director’s ashtray. Blasphemy! Heresy! Disorder and disarray and misconduct and disrespect! Serge sans cigarette? What a diss! And weirdly, up in the above-ground atmosphere, at the bus stops, his Gitane had been restored––Serge was allowed to smoke at the bus stop, apparently . . . but the Métro was interdit. Not that one should ever question the logic behind the costards-cravates––the Suits––that run the Parisian transport system, but still . . .
Given the cigarette so rudely snatched from Serge’s mouth in the Paris Métro portion of the movie’s ad campaign, one wonders how extensive the Gitanes budget was for Gainsbourg: vie héroïque. Le Bio-picque. Had the manufacturer acted as sponsor? Had the French film industry finally gotten hip to product placement? Either way, it would be accurate, in some form or shape, to declare that the movie was, in its own way, (a clearing of the throat) smoking.
In the early days, in his early shy and whispery way, Serge observed that, “At the cinema, people like to see films that are violent and terrible.” Gainsbourg: vie héroïque is neither. In point of fact, it’s pretty damn good. In point of fact, when you think about it, and when you think about biopics in general, and when you think of the state of cinema in general, and when you think of the state of French cinema in general, in point of fact with Gainsbourg: vie héroïque, they did a generally classy job.
Because here’s the thing, cinéphiles: there are some fabulous shoes in this movie. Damn sexy. On the boys and on the girls. The pianos? Pure porn. And Juliette Gréco’s dress? (Well, it wasn’t the actual real Juliette Gréco, it was an actress, Anna Mouglalis, but still . . .) The backless one? Held together with a string of diamonds? Hot. (The real actual dress was black, but I think it’s safe to say that it was red-hot.) As was Anna, or Juliette, or . . . And then there were a few filmic devices, clever and aesthetic and generally pretty surprisingly great, that got the directors and writers and producers and crew people and best boys and extras and actors and the audience in and out and around some un-classy, un-clever, un-conscionable classic biopic characteristics. Especially the violins.
Because: There’s a certain unappetizing reality, a certain Ugly Truth about a certain segment of the French film industry today. A certain set of French directors of a certain set of mind almost certainly always try to copy a certain style of cinema. A certain style of foreign––and thus non-French––cinema. From abroad, that is. Abroad as in Hollywood-abroad. As in America. Which means American-style formulas (in French) and American-style scripts (in French) and American-style starlets (in French) and, worst of all, American-style violins (almost certainly imported directly from France). You know the ones. The soaring, sailing, swooping, sweeping kind that almost certainly always swoop and sweep and soar and sail in the background, right at the climax of the film––immediately after the crisis but before the dénouement––and here’s Bruce Willis, his broad balding brush-cutted head baldly braving a barrage of bullets, and in the background there they are, the American violins, and there’s probably almost certainly an American flag, too, and there’s definitely Bruce, brave, bold, bald, buzz-cutted et al, and the bad guys are coming and his M16 or AK-47 or whatever the hell it is is jammed and . . . and . . . cue more American violins! And the American flag!! Land of the free, home of the bald!
Well, thankfully, in Gainsbourg: vie héroïque there’s none of that. No Bruce, no brush cuts, no American violins, thank you, Dieu. And thank you, Director Joann Sfar. Oh sure, there’s violins, but they’re Serge’s own. At least in some shape or form. Only arranged and performed by somebody else.
Here’s the formula:
Feed a Frenchman two glasses of cheap Bordeaux and it’s near-impossible for him to resist slipping into a little Serge. At parties, they huddle in little Frenchmen herds, not really Rugby-scrum-like, but more fashionista Frenchman-like, bunching up around the iPod or the laptop or the CD player or, if they’re super-ultra-hipster-chic, the record player, as Gainsbourg Big Bad Wolf’s his way through “Je t’aime moi non plus,” with Jane Birkin or Brigitte Bardot, one or the other, depending on how many versions of the song are on hand, uncontrollably gasping, panting, crying out, coming, climaxing, wheezing in the background. With Serge on the sono, these Frenchmen begin lighting their cigarettes differently, with a flourish, a figure-eight, a Fosse-esque flick. Those Frenchman lucky enough to have landed an English girlfriend––or hell, any girl from the U.K., or any girl from any of the former U.K. colonies, or any girl who can at any time at all accurately imitate an English accent, or, hell, any girl at all, at any time, no matter what language she speaks, that wears micro-nano-mini mod dresses over lustrous-lush-long-lisse legs––at some point, sometime, in some way, somehow imagines himself, considers himself, to be Serge. You know, in the context of Jane.
And then, through a screen of smoke that’s twisting, twirling, curling, whirling like a dancer performing a sexy-sad swan song, they start telling you, in detail, over and over again, at length, repeatedly, raptly, about Serge. They even adopt his ticks––the little wave of the chin, the jerky-quick nods of the head, the sneery-snarly-smarmy-cynique style of speech.
Like did you hear about the time that he was on Michel Drucker’s show and he told Whitney Houston that he wanted to fuck her? Live––en direct ? You shoulda seen her face! Or that tune, “Les sucettes,” that he wrote for and performed with blonde, innocent, teenage, practically France’s own version of the All-American-girl-next-door France Gall, and she had no idea, none whatsoever, that the song strongly hinted at not only how much Annie liked lollipops but Something Else Too, that there was a double entendre, that it wasn’t just lollipops that Annie loved sucking? Then there was that TV show where he burned three-quarters of a five-hundred franc note for all the country to see, to signify what percentage of his profits were going toward taxes, and of course it’s completely illegal to burn money in public or otherwise because, well, money’s for the State to burn. And did you hear about the time he re-recorded France’s national anthem, the magnificent Marseillaise, a tribute to blood and war and violence and arms and the eradication of all who are not of pure blood, of those who are of sang impur, reggae-style, with Bob Marley’s Sly & Robbie performing and Bob Marley’s back-up singers singing back-up, summing up all that war and blood and violence and arms and impure blood as “et caetera ?” It’s a catchy little chorus––here, let’s play it for you. Pierre––merde!––throw it on . . . I want to show her why it really pissed people off! Oh, and then there was that video clip, the one for “Lemon Incest,” the one Serge filmed with his pre-pubescent daughter, Charlotte, that features the two of them rolling around an enormous satin-sheeted bed––Serge all bear-y and bare-chested, Charlotte clad in a skimpy blouse and white cotton panties––and in breathy bed-tones they’re discussing the unique, sacred, unrealized love, a love that can never be consummated, that’s shared between father and daughter? That––that––well, what would they make of THAT back in YOUR country, Caro-leen?!
“It’s not fair to reduce Serge’s notoriety to his long list of scandales,” they’ll conclude, lighting another Lucky or Marlboro or Winston or Camel while wishing, secretly, silently, that, if just for that soirée, beforehand, at the tabac, they had substituted their usual brands for the famed, if foul-smelling, Gitanes. “He was respected for his amazing body of work. He was loved for advocating and protecting freedom of thought, freedom of spirit, the libre-esprit.”
(Really what they’re saying is that they admire and laud and love and envy Serge for getting to go to bed with Bardot, Birkin and Bambou.) (Especially when you took into consideration his un-Aryan, un-Adonis-like, unappreciated ears and nose.) (It’s fair to say, in all fairness, that it’s too easy to call Bambou “Bimbo,” but we will anyway, in all unfairness.)
“The first time I met him I thought he was horrible,” confessed a wide-eyed British Jane Birkin in wide-eyed British French in a television interview, back in the day, back when Serge was still alive, back when she was his wife, the love of his life. “But what I had originally taken for aggression was actually enormous shyness.”
Serge almost certainly exclusively wrote for women, women like Gréco and Deneuve and Birkin and Bardot, and Hardy and Paradis, too, women whose careers and creativity and artistry and craft he launched and nourished and cultivated and helped to blossom and grow and bud and bloom. Some of them couldn’t even really sing, at least not if we’re going to get all tight-assed and analytical and annoying about classical chops, but he knew what to do with them anyway. How to direct Jane’s shaky baby-girl voice that was never sure of hitting the right note in the right direction; or how to make la Deneuve’s uptight, pickle-up-the-butt comportement, well, kinda cute. Hell, Serge even made it seem O.K. that Bardot sang like a dying cow, as if he understood in advance the animal activism to come. And the fact that she couldn’t act? No matter––she didn’t look like a dying cow, after all. He merely had her stand still, in a tableau, for the clip for “Bonnie and Clyde,” stunned . . . as if he’d clubbed her like a baby seal.
“We take women for what they are not,” Serge said, with, no doubt, a matter-of-fact swirly swoosh of his cigarette, “and we leave them for what they are.”
Jane left.
Jane left Serge, after a long spell, not for what he was, but for what he had become. “He’s very difficult to live with . . . but who wants easy?” she’d challenged an interviewer back in her wide-eyed micro-skirted British-French days. But after a while, “easy” was probably pretty seriously attractive, because Serge had now become his real-life alter-ego, Gainsbarre. The bloated, belligerent, boozed-up Gainsbarre, the Gainsbourg/Gainsbarre who, in the tradition of lost, aging, lost mid-life men who know they’ve screwed up a good thing and lost it for good, tried to replace Jane with the simulated Jane-simulation who was Bambou. He might have done better with a red Corvette, but he just wasn’t American. It’s all so sad to watch, especially the clip for “Charlotte for Ever,” as, on a grey, windy beach, he clings to his daughter, apologizing to her, but not only her, but obviously, inadvertently, profusely, abjectly to Jane, Charlotte’s mother, his estranged wife, so much the love of his life. But it’s real-life, and real love, and alter-egos and all their warts and all, and the thing about Serge is that he wasn’t afraid of being human. And all honor to him. Because being human, really human, not a man, not a woman, but merely human, is pretty damn courageous. And complex.
Gainsbourg: vie héroïque begins at the beginning but doesn’t end exactly at The End. And to the movie’s credit, it doesn’t try to cover everything in between, exactly. Which, despite the probable protests from all of those cigarette-wielding Frenchmen fashionistas, is probably for the better. Because in France, or in French cinemas, at least, or at least in Parisian cinemas, people normally stay to The End. As in The End — the very post-credit End, when the final credits have rolled, finally, bitterly. But at the Gainsbourg film? Which lasted two-and-a-half hours? People couldn’t wait. They just couldn’t wait to leave. They were desperate. Because after vicariously living through and vicariously living with and vicariously witnessing and vicariously, voyeuristically watching all of those graceful and generous and gratuitously-glowing Gainsbourgian Gitanes, it was time. It was time to go out for a smoke.
*First published on Running In Heels and The New Vulgate in 2010. This version was edited for length.
