Wine, women, song — and Gitane cigarettes. That aptly sums up the life of Serge Gainsbourg, the legendary French singer, songwriter and womanizer, as depicted in “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life,” a fictionalized account of his self-destructive existence.
Directed and written by prolific comic-book artist Joann Sfar, the song-filled biopic follows Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg, from his youth as a Russian Jew in Nazi-occupied France to his days as the booze-soaked epitome of cool in the 1960s.
Between puffs on his ever-present Gitane, he beds sex-kitten Brigitte Bardot, chanteuse Juliette Greco and any number of other beautiful women, and marries singer-actress Jane Birkin, who bore him a daughter, Charlotte.
Eric Elmosnino, looking remarkably like his real-life character, is grand as the adult Gainsbourg. But Laetitia Casta steals the movie as Bardot, slinking down the hall in a miniskirt and knee-high black boots, leading a dog on a leash, then cavorting nude behind a bedsheet as Gainsbourg knocks out a song on the piano. Also strong are the late Lucy Gordon as Birkin, Anna Mouglalis as Greco and Kacey Mottet Klein as Gainsbourg the precocious child.
The funniest scene comes when Gainsbourg’s dad discovers that his hawk-nosed son is in the next room with no one less than Bardot.
Gainsbourg died of cardiac arrest in 1991, at age 62. I’m sure that he, a troublemaker his entire life, would be pleased to know that daughter Charlotte — unforgettable in Lars von Trier’s scandalous “Antichrist” — is now one of France’s most provocative actresses.
While an iconic figure in France, Gainsbourg isn’t a household name here in the States. But that shouldn’t stop audiences from enjoying Sfar’s good-looking, fanciful film.