“Jane by Charlotte”, I love you… me too – Liberation

For her first feature, Charlotte Gainsbourg films Jane Birkin in an attempt to grasp the nature of their relationship. A moving document.–

Filming happiness lest it run away, photographing these hands, this mouth, which are now adorned with spots and wrinkles but which are there, fleshy, alive, evoking regrets in half-words the better to annihilate them : the beautiful Jane par Charlotte is entirely driven by the awareness of passing time, inhabited by the absent, celebrating those who remain, all that remains. It is the film of a daughter (Charlotte Gainsbourg) about her mother (Jane Birkin), and in that more universal than one might think, probing the depths of filial love – this love that we would always like to be simple and crystal clear, and which remains decidedly complicated and mysterious – a film which perhaps also asks, in its roundabout way, for proofs of love from the opposite side. Any film is a seizure of power, this one spares its place as a child, second in the siblings, to its filmmaker.

Their relationship, however, seems to have been nothing obvious. The object of the film, which begins by following Jane Birkin on tour in Japan, is thus described by her daughter: to probe a reserve between them, “that you don’t have, it seems to me, with Lou [Doillon] or Kate [Barry]». Mother’s response: “You always intimidated me.” After this introduction which shudders at a low noise of tension, the film gradually gains in intimacy, until it becomes downright tight-lipped, constructing small yet essential nothings, far from what these two famous women have been able to give, until then. , to see in their lifetime – visit to a bulldog breeder, concert in New York, choice of seeds for planting… Two great absentees, Serge Gainsbourg then Kate Barry, make their appearance, the first during a somewhat bewildering visit in her house, where nothing has changed, down to the food in the fridge, the second thanks to films capturing her in the lost joy of childhood. Also inhabited by nostalgia, and even, fleetingly, guilt, Jane par Charlotte comes to offer reparation, in its way of taking note of the broken links.

A glimpse of the end breaks down all the dikes, not those of modesty – in this the film remains faithful to its filmmaker – but those of an immense love that dared not express itself. “I have always loved you, but I understand it so well today”, whispers Charlotte’s voice off, in the last, poignant moments. “I need you to teach me how to live, to re-teach me as if I didn’t understand, as if it were just a rehearsal.”

Jane par Charlotte, by Charlotte Gainsbourg (1h30).

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