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Friday, June 3, 2011

SIFF Serge Gainsbourg Gets the Biopic Treatment

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 2:59 PM

At its beginning, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life feels as though it's going to avoid all the musical biopic tropes. For one thing, it's directed by French comics artist Joann Sfar, so it has a very strong visual sense, which movies like Walk the Line are generally missing. For another thing, it takes some chances. Within a couple of scenes, a young Gainsbourg is chased around Nazi-occupied Paris by a four-armed, enormous-headed monster Jewish caricature that comes to life out of a poster. After he grows up, his anxiety is represented by a beak-nosed papier-mache caricature of himself that he calls his "mug." At one point, his mug lights itself on fire and dances around his studio. This is not another pumped-up episode of Behind the Music.

Unfortunately, as Sfar tries to touch all the biographical points of Gainsbourg's life, the movie gets more generic and Behind the Music-like as it goes. We see the affair with Bardot and the drinking problem and the controversy, and Gainsbourg's mug transforms from a daring artistic flourish into another boring character, giving voice to his inward struggles. It's a wasted bit of creativity that simply becomes annoying by the end of the movie.

But! As far as generic musical biopics go, you've seen way worse. Eric Elmosnino is brilliant as Gainsbourg, capturing his charm, his smarm, and his petulant boyishness in equal helpings. The sex scenes are sexy. The film doesn't feature the tiresome American preoccupation with cycling through the whole drug addiction narrative in explicit, preachy detail. And the music is great. If you're a Gainsbourg fan, it'll probably be worth your time, though by the end you'll be thinking more about your aching butt than Elmosnino's magical performance.

(Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life plays at the Admiral in about an hour. It also plays in Kirkland on June 7.)

Comments (3) RSS

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Thanks for the heads up Paul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsX4M-by5…

Posted by anon12 on June 3, 2011 at 5:29 PM

I've seen this, and Constant's review is pretty much right on. Just wanted to add that the woman who plays Bardot has the best screen entrance since Tilda Swinton's in the otherwise pretty dull "Limits of Control".

Posted by levide on June 3, 2011 at 6:59 PM

I'm just glad to see a Ken Russell movie, even if no one wants to give Ken Russell the money to make an actual Ken Russell movie.

Posted by ratzkywatzky on June 4, 2011 at 9:43 AM