The “horrible” 1988 movie Charlotte Gainsbourg refused to watch: “I didn’t like it”
Being born to famous parents is never going to give you a normal upbringing, but even more so when your parents are Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.
Before Charlotte Gainsbourg was born, her parents stirred plenty of controversy by recording ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’, an erotic song that was banned by countless radio stations because of all the excessive moaning from Birkin. It’s a great, timeless track, but it’s not hard to see why, back in 1969, people were horrified by what they were hearing. It sounded like Birkin and Gainsbourg really were getting it on in the recording booth.
Controversy didn’t merely disappear once the couple had baby Charlotte, however. The young Gainsbourg witnessed her parents’ effect on the public from a young age, like when her father recorded a duet with her called ‘Lemon Incest’, which featured a rather questionable music video featuring the pair lying in bed. It’s a bizarre song and video, with Gainsbourg only 12 years old at the time.
Gainsbourg has always been used to the spotlight, as well as all things slightly taboo, then. Yet, things started to change – albeit briefly – when the future musician and actor (best known for her collaborations with cinematic provocateur Lars von Trier, no less) hit her teen years. Like most adolescents, she went through a period of not wanting all eyes on her, but this was hard when a camera crew decided to move into her house for a year for the sake of filming a movie about her mother.
Gainsbourg was about 15 years old when Birkin agreed to have French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda stay at their home for an extended period for the making of Jane B par Agnes V, a blend of reality and fantasy that celebrated Birkin turning 40. The film reflected on ageing and identity, with the ‘60s icon stepping into a new era of her career, defined by shorter hair, more casual clothes, and a resistance to the beauty standards that had made her so popular a few decades prior.
While the movie was a monumental moment in Birkin’s creative career – her collaboration with Varda fostering a screenplay, Kung Fu Master, which the pair would then go on to film shortly after – Gainsbourg felt like her teenage privacy had been interrupted. In fact, she claims that to this day, she has never watched Kung-Fu Master!, which she starred in as Lucy, the daughter of Birkin’s Mary-Jane.
“I’ve never seen that film. It’s so, so far away that I just remember being that teenager. I knew Varda was shooting sort of a documentary on my mother. I think it was called Jane B By Agnès V. And during that shoot, my mother came up with that story she wanted to do. So it was very spontaneous, and it didn’t take a very long time to do, but the whole experience was… I didn’t like it,” she told The AV Club.
It was a tough time for Gainsbourg, who couldn’t realise at that age just how special the experience was for both Birkin and Varda. Of course, when you’re 15, you just want to be left alone, to have your own space, but that was practically impossible when Varda came to stay.
“She sort of camped in our living room, and there was a whole cinema crew that lived with us for a year, and it was just horrible. Being a teenager, I wanted to shut myself off in my room, so that’s all I can remember. Now, of course, I love Agnès, and she’s a very sweet woman, but I didn’t have that awareness of what I was doing,” Gainsbourg concluded.
