Boris and Natasha Palmer The best aphrodisiac for ambitious women is cash. Serge knew the secret to unlocking cash. Women wanted to know Serge to unlock him. So he could unlock cash for them. (Les Saucettes was The Mega Trolling of the 20th century)As a first generation immigrant from Russia, I can easily identify with Serge's parents. From the parent's prospective - the film is spot-on about struggles of the second generation immigrants. Kids torn between two cultures. Not the poor-basketball-playing-refugee kind. But the over-educated middle class kind. Cursed with sensitive nature. Trying to fit in. And giving up.Serge had given up. And killed himself slowly. That's the story.

Spiked! spike-online.com It would be difficult to make a dull film about someone as fearlessly unconventional as iconic French songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg (1928- 1991).This, after all, was the man who coaxed a teenage starlet unwittingly to sing a song about oral sex; who outraged French nationalists by releasing a reggae version of 'La Marseillaise' with Jamaican musicians, Sly and Robbie; who propositioned Whitney Houston live on French TV. His sex obsession wasn't all talk, either; he seduced the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Gréco and Jane Birkin. In Britain, he is best known for the chart-topping moan-and-groanathon 'Je T'Aime… Moi Non Plus' and largely remains a minority interest here. In France, however, he has long been held up as a national treasure, a symbol of Gallic panache, style and defiant rule-breaking. And today, you can't help wonder whether the French need him more than ever.As a first-time director, Joann Sfar does a credible job with Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) in charting the many colourful incidents in Serge's career. There are so many rich pickings in Gainsbourg's life that some of them, the aforementioned Houston controversy and the 'Lemon Incest' single that he recorded with his daughter Charlotte, are left out. Likewise, Gainsbourg's relationships are sometimes covered in a sketchy way; his life with his first wife, Elisabeth 'Lize' Levitsky, is mentioned only fleetingly.To be fair, though, Sfar appears intent on giving us a psychological portrait of Gainsbourg (superbly played by Eric Elmosnino), an exploration of what fuelled his demons, insecurities and ambitions. The film starts with the young Lucien Ginsburg - his real name - experiencing the degradations of Nazi-occupied Paris. As Jews, he and his family are forced to wear the yellow star and to look at grotesque anti-Semitic caricatures everywhere they turn. This is perhaps the most eye-catching part of Gainsbourg - it's an unflinching examination of French complicity in the persecution of its Jewish citizens. Elsewhere, the film notes how Gainsbourg's 'trouble making' was sometimes blamed on his Jewishness, and was therefore said to have played a part in stirring up anti-Semitism.All of this is dealt with in an impressive, playful style: an anti- Semitic caricature from a Nazi poster comes to life and follows young Lucien around. Later on, a similar grotesque version of Gainsbourg himself, 'The Mug', acts as a sort of right-hand demon, willing Gainsbourg on to greater mischief, seduction and, importantly, artistic achievement.We see Gainsbourg the struggling painter and writer, earning a crust playing muzak piano in Paris bars before discovering his real strengths as a witty lyricist and strikingly original songwriter capable of turning his hand to any musical genre. Curiously for a music biopic, Gainsbourg's songs only make cameo appearances, such as when Bardot (Laetitia Casta) zips up her boots to the sound of an instrumental version of Harley Davidson. And there's an amusing scene where, mid- 1970s, Gainsbourg tries his hand at jerky new wave – successfully – with his notorious 'Nazi Rock' single. Unfortunately, no amount of stylistic brilliance compensates for his declining 1980s period, wherein Gainsbourg's Olympian intake of cigarettes and alcohol took its toll on his appearance, voice and general demeanor. It almost unravels the iconography he created during his peak, but the fact he could still pull beautiful young women suggests he hadn't quite lost it.The fascinating thing about Gainsbourg is as much what it says about contemporary France as about Serge's life. The film was released in France in the midst of a national debate on French identity. And since the fiasco of France's World Cup campaign in South Africa this summer – when the team revolted against the coach and suffered an ignominious early exit - this identity crisis has intensified. One French journalist reckons that the 'bad-tempered, illiterate and uncultured' national football team are symptomatic of a broader malaise across the whole of French society. The world of art, music and writing so lovingly portrayed in Gainsbourg is no doubt a forlorn reminder of the High Life that France was once fondly associated with.Serge's musical gifts are an advertisement for the cultural gifts that the French nation has often given Europe and the rest of the world. But the film's recurring meditation on racism and anti-Semitism in France - and the constant shadow of Nazi collaboration - is also a signifier of national self-loathing and self-doubt. Indeed, last year's French remake of the Gaullist 1969 film Army of Shadows, retitled Army of Crime, acknowledged the French state's complicity in Nazi atrocities that the original left out. This would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.In this sense, France is going through a similar bout of national self- abasement to the one Britain has been experiencing for the past 10 years or so. Revelations and then movies about Britain's dirty war in Northern Ireland have become commonplace, as have apologies from on high for Britain's colonial record generally and its role in the African slave trade.The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was on to something when he said he was worried about the shift towards 'self-hatred' within French society and its potentially destructive impact. Unfortunately, his call for a debate about 'national identity' has been as clumsy as that initiated by British politicians, while his decision to stop Muslim women wearing the burqa in public suggests that France really has lost its understanding of what it means to be a secular, liberal nation rooted in Enlightenment values.Gainsbourg appears to be influenced by these contemporary tensions in French society. While on the one hand it happily plays on the Gallic stereotypes of freedom-loving aesthetes with a liberal attitude towards sex, it also morbidly dwells on the Nazi occupation and residual racism across French society. Appealing to past glories and abasing past disgraces, however, won't help resolve the question of French national identity today. The French only need to look across the Channel to see the folly in that strategy.

the_rattlesnake25 Lucien 'Serge Gainsbourg' Ginsburg. Artist. Writer. Performer. Alcoholic. Smoker. Rebel. Womanizer. Genius? Joann Sfar's film documents the sporadic lifestyle of the famous French artist Serge Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino), whose life contained no boundaries, no objects off limit, and continually tested the patience of those huddled together around him. Beginning with a young Gainsbourg developing his taste for painting aspiring models in Nazi-Occupied France as a mere teenager, the film thereupon concentrates primarily upon his relationships with various beautiful women and his life choices in regards to his ever-changing occupation over his sixty-year-life-span.What makes this film work so well as a biopic is the truly ingenious performances by both Kacey Mottet Klein (Young Gainsbourg) and Eric Elmosnino (Adult Gainsbourg) who both somewhat beautifully represent such a tragic figure throughout his whole on-screen lifetime. Kacey portrays Gainsbourg as a boy who is maturing faster than those other children around him, so far so, that he explains to one of the schoolchildren the reason that he is good at drawing pubic hairs is because he has had an up-close and personal experience with them before. While he is also shown to be a lonely child, an outcast as Jewish child growing up in Nazi-Occupied France, and thus he develops an affable 'imaginary friend' to keep himself company. Born as small, soft head that watches over young Gainsbourg as he sleeps in the woods to avoid the Nazi soldiers, his only friend soon becomes his worst enemy as he matures into a complicated man. His once pleasant 'imaginary friend' is now a grotesque being with a large nose, long-thin fingers and an affection for cigarettes and bullying Gainsbourg. He continually berates insults, prods and engages Serge, providing the viewpoint that he himself was his harshest critic, and a critic he could not simply dismiss without entire control over his life.Aside from the performances, the way Sfar allows the films narrative to flow in a temporal manner with no mention of time, or calendar dates, further draws the audience in to Gainsbourg's contrived world. The only way to tell when an event shifts forward in his lifetime, is through his own physical deterioration from old age which is heavily dictated by his excessive abuse of alcohol and tobacco. But as Gainsbourg becomes older, his sexual conquests stay the same age; from Elisabeth (Deborah Grall), to Jane (the late Lucy Gordon), and to an affair with the insatiable Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta), before he eventually settles down with Bambou (Mylene Jampanoi), who would be his final partner. These are all young, vulnerable women who Gainsbourg exploits for his own sexual misgivings, and once they become too old, or too boring, he discards them like a child throwing away an old toy to badger his parents for a new, more expensive model.Joann Sfar beautifully flowing biopic paints Serge Gainsbourg as a shallow, misogynistic, grumpy old man, who once had dreams of becoming famous for doing anything, but once those dreams were realised, greed and narcissism triumphed over his once forgotten ambitions. Utilizing his gift for writing, artistry and music Gainsbourg chose the route of controversy and scandal over that of happiness and family, which is exemplified in his response to the media after he had a heart attack. When the reporters asked what he will be doing now after such a dangerous and life threatening operation, Gainsbourg calmly asserted to those in attendance that he will "continue to smoke many more cigarettes and drink much more alcohol."

patemdens A film "should always have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in this order" declared Jean Luc Godard. Yoan Sfar grabs this motto with both hands in his biopic of legendary artist Serge Gainsbourg. His film is quirky, light fun and captivating. The visuals take reference and influence from Pan's Labyrinth, Luis Bunnuel and Lewis Carol. Still, there is a very personal flair and the mark of a future visionary film maker as important as Jean Pierre Jeunet. Yoan Sfar is clearly in awe of the subject and by surfacing the rich, complex and probably excessive life of Serge Gainsbourg, he manages to make light of a troubled artist. The acting is top-notch from everyone involved, Anna Mouglalis as sultry Juliette Greco to Laetitia Casta as the one and only Brigitte Bardot and not to forget Lucy Gordon (who tragically died shortly after the film wrapped)as vulnerable Jane Birkin. Eric Elmosnino is utterly convincing as Serge, capturing ticks and manners we french are so familiar with from Serge Gainsbourg. The man's artistry is beyond doubt and there isn't a media that Serge Gainsbourg touched that didn't turn into a creative gold pot. This is paid tribute to very well here, both in terms of cinematic language and the content of the film. I was kept fascinated, absorbed and amused even if I disagreed with a few story plots, for example, I am not sure France Gall had any idea what she was singing about with "les sucettes (Lollipops) until the song had been a hit and she refused to leave her own flat for months after because she was so ashamed by the true meaning of the song, although the film suggests Serge asking her if he can write a kinky song for her. But all the same, we, as stimulated spectators, cannot help but concede to the fact that 5 other films could be made on the legend that Serge Gainsbourg was, not one would get to the core of the real man. So treat this film as a personal homage from a fan and watch it purely for entertainment value. A good idea after could be to grab a glass of red, sit down, "Youtube" Serge Gainsbourg and enjoy the ride...