The film, aimed at fans, is the culmination of a long process of returning to a family and a legend with which Charlotte Gainsbourg has long sought to take off, settling in New York.
“At the beginning, I didn’t really know what I was doing”, explained in Cannes to AFP Charlotte Gainsbourg, who filmed her mother in several sequences, over several years. “I did all of this selfishly. I was looking for an excuse to get closer to her. […] and distinguish the public figure from the mother I love“.
“At first, Charlotte arrived with a huge notebook, I was afraid of an ‘OK Corral’ of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, I freaked out,” laughs Jane Birkin. , who admits in the end having discovered with this film “the place (that she) occupied” for her daughter.
Serge Gainsbourg, French music icon who died in 1991, Kate Barry, the half-sister of Charlotte, photographer and daughter of composer John Barry, raised with Serge and died in tragic circumstances at the age of 46… “Our lives revolve around the dead”, continues Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The film is an opportunity to reunite a daughter and a mother whom life had separated, with strong sequences, like the return in flashback mode to the family cocoon of the Gainsbourgs rue de Verneuil in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.