Charlotte Gainsbourg was in Montreal to present her first film as a director. In Jane par Charlotte, the actress and singer draws the portrait of Jane Birkin, her mother, also an actress and singer. But this exercise, sometimes painful, goes well beyond the exchange between two artists. Maintenance.
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When she took her camera “a little like nothing” to film her mother, Charlotte Gainsbourg had no idea what she was going to do. What form would this irrepressible urge to meet a woman she had never really spoken to take? A twenty-minute interview for the family archives? A documentary for a possible broadcast on TV? In any case, the idea of a feature-length documentary did not impose itself immediately.
“I did not expect at all to make a feature film that would be screened in theaters, even less to go to the Cannes Film Festival, she explained during an interview granted Tuesday to The Press. It was more of a personal approach at the start, a kind of impetus that was not at all considered. »
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Charlotte Gainsbourg came to present her first film as a director, Jane par Charlotte.
First, concerts
This momentum took shape the day when, a few years ago, Charlotte Gainsbourg moved to New York to live there for a while, just to mourn her older sister Kate, who died tragically in 2013 in unexplained circumstances.
“At that time, I also started to see the concerts that my mother did with symphony orchestras. The angle she chose was to rehash my dad’s songs [Serge Gainsbourg] orchestrally, and when grouped together, all the texts of these songs also retraced their love story. It was magical. Being their daughter, I was very moved. When I found out she was going to perform in Japan, I asked her if I might follow her with a camera. »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Charlotte Gainsbourg went behind the camera to film her mother, Jane Birkin.
From the moment the director had the idea of documenting this Japanese stopover by following Jane Birkin behind the scenes, the obligatory passage that is the interview in a documentary quickly imposed itself. For Charlotte, the exercise was daunting. And almost derailed everything.
“There is a great shyness between us, which meant that the approach was complicated to assume, she confides. My mother saw me arrive with my questions and she was completely traumatized! To the point that, following this first interview, she said to me: ‟We stop.” She thought I was going to hold her to account, that she was going to have to justify herself as a mother, but that was not my intention at all. It is true that I took it very awkwardly, forgetting to first install a climate of trust. I was naive, ill-prepared. »
A documentary combined with the present
In the exercise, Charlotte Gainsbourg sometimes had the feeling that the simple fact that her question was heard was more important than the answer that was to follow. Jane’s second daughter – who had three by three different fathers – the director had never had the opportunity to have a real one-on-one with her mother.
“This film comes a lot from that research, from that request, in fact. As the filming progressed, I became aware of the privileged moment I was having with her. »
The director wanted to paint a portrait of her mother as she is now. In this, her approach differs greatly from that taken by Agnès Varda more than three decades ago. Jane B. by Agnès V. was more of a Jane Birkin-inspired fantasy, in which the actress played characters in a series of tableaux. Jane par Charlotte is rather an intimate portrait between a daughter and her mother, linked by the presence of two ghosts: that of Serge Gainsbourg, of course, but also that of Kate, daughter of one and sister of the other.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
In the company of her daughter Charlotte, Jane Birkin returned to the apartment where she lived with Serge Gainsbourg for the first time.
“I wanted this documentary to be connected to the present, without resorting to scenes from TV archives or shows,” says the director. I also didn’t want my father to be omnipresent. At the same time, I had a lot of questions related to him. My mother continued my father’s work following his death and has been paying homage to him for 30 years. »
painful elements
The evocation of the memory of Kate Barry, whose father was the British composer John Barry, is necessarily more painful. Both for her mother and for her sister, to whom she was also very close, the sudden disappearance of Kate, at the age of 46, was a shock. At one point, old Super 8 films made when Kate was a child are projected in the background, an exercise too painful for Jane, then unable to watch.
“My sister is present in this film on many levels because I wanted to talk regarding pain and lack,” says Charlotte Gainsbourg. I also wanted to see Kate concretely. I stopped directing these Super 8 films projected on a wall at the request of my mother, while being aware that I was still allowing myself to cross this limit. I’m a little ashamed today because I probably went a little too far. That said, I accept it because when you make a film, you also have to accept the manipulation you do. »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in Jane par CharlotteCharlotte Gainsbourg’s first film as a director.
Jane Birkin a vu Jane par Charlotte in an unfinished version. However, she did not want to see him once more. At the launch of the film last year at the Cannes Film Festival, the actress did not wish to stay in the room for the screening. Charlotte Gainsbourg fully understands her mother’s reaction.
There are painful elements in this film for her. I still felt very touched. And if the existence of this film makes her very happy, it does not mean that she wants to see it once more. I understand her perfectly, especially since I don’t like to see myself either.
Charlotte Gainsbourg on her mother, Jane Birkin
This first stint behind the camera also gave Charlotte Gainsbourg an “tremendous” pleasure that she did not expect.
“The shooting was painful, chaotic, long and strewn with many doubts, but I loved the editing stage. I felt indebted to my mother for delivering a film that held up, and it was during the editing stage that the magic happened. I am proud. »
There may well be a second feature film one day, necessarily different, but the actress is currently working on a musical work.
“I always put a crazy amount of time into it! »
Jane par Charlotte hits theaters March 18.
