“I was terribly clumsy”: confidences of Charlotte Gainsbourg on her mother Jane Birkin

Last summer, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin walked together at the Cannes Film Festival for the documentary she made about her mother. A film project entitled Jane par Charlotte which may seem obvious. And yet, the shooting of this film, which will be released in theaters on January 12, was very difficult. The idea that Charlotte Gainsbourg describes as “Very selfish” came to Yvan Attal’s companion when she saw his mother on stage during her symphonic tour. “I was moved like never before. It was as if I had the love story and the breakup of my parents who paraded. It made me want to know more. But I didn’t want to make yet another documentary with archives. I wanted this to be my gaze », she explained this Sunday, January 2 in the columns of JDD. Only his mother hadn’t quite understood the angle of attack chosen by his daughter.

“I initially thought that Charlotte wanted to make a conventional documentary and that she would ask me professional questions: what is it like to be famous at 17, etc. I was amazed that she was curious about me, so I was flattered … », Jane Birkin told the weekly. Only, she quickly became disillusioned, to the point of stopping everything for two years. “Afterwards, when we started shooting in Tokyo, I was worried to see her come out of the files with lots of questions. It must have meant that I had done things wrong. I thought of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Autumn Sonata’, where a mother and daughter clash against a backdrop of resentment. I said stop », said the artist who was in shock. Looking back, the director recognizes her awkwardness. « I was awfully clumsy, I know it. It was our report that interested me. I thought a little stupidly that if we got rid of front-end questions, we could go further “, explained Charlotte Gainsbourg this Sunday, January 2 in the JDD.

> Discover the photos of Jane Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Cannes

“I was scared to rush her …”

“It is above all that we were not one-on-one but under the watchful eye of a film crew. It freaked me out », replied his mother in this interview. The project was then stopped, but not buried. It was revived thanks to another film that ended up convincing Jane Birkin. “You came to do a concert in New York. One evening, we saw a documentary on the great American author Joan Didion. It was done by his nephew, it was very touching. Then we looked the images of Japan, which in the end we did not find so brutal as that », Charlotte Gainsbourg recalled. “My mother said to me: why not continue? So we resumed, gently. I was scared to rush her… “, continued the 50-year-old actress and singer.

“The film really took shape when I came back to live in France in 2020. There was the Covid and I was not doing well at all. My mother helped me a lot to get out of my state. We toured and saw each other a lot, in a kind of pleasant routine ”, specifies the daughter of the legendary couple formed by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. The septuagenarian artist therefore agreed to go out of his reserve to save his daughter in a certain way. “Who else can do it except a mother?” If I’m not there to help her and reassure her at a time when she’s lost, I’m of no use, I’m just a superficial singer who sings! (…) I understood that Charlotte had questions and that I was the only one who could answer him », admits the 75-year-old star who recognizes in the JDD that she and her daughter look alike ” more and more “.

Article written in collaboration with 6Medias

Photo credits: COADIC GUIREC / BESTIMAGE

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