‘Kung Fu Master!’: Jane Birkin’s most controversial role
Coming of age in swinging London, Jane Birkin felt the pressures of an era built on style and sexual freedom, but despite her insecurities, she put herself forward for movie roles and modelling jobs, and she soon became a recognisable 1960s face. Appearing in movies like The Knack…And How To Get It and Blow-Up as a budding actor, Birkin eventually earned bigger roles in films such as Wonderwall and La Piscine.
Soon, France became her new home, and after meeting French crooner Serge Gainsbourg, she began a singing career, too. Making waves with her controversial single ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ with Gainsbourg, which featured erotic moaning sounds, Birkin became a well-known figure, and she subsequently found success with albums like Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg and Di doo dah.
Birkin’s acting career continued while she focused on music, and she could be seen in a range of titles, typically French-language ones like Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman with Brigitte Bardot, Catherine et Compagnie, written by a young Catherine Brelliat, and Je t’aime moi non plus, which earned her a Cesar nomination.
However, as Birkin reached her 40s, she realised that she wasn’t as bothered about fashion and appearances anymore, finding a freeing sense of relief in cutting her hair short. Yet, it took Birkin time to come to terms with ageing – something that many women can resonate with – and with the help of filmmaker Agnes Varda, she came to appreciate the beauty of getting older. This is explored in the essay film Jane B par Agnès V, which sees Birkin act out various vignettes that place her in different, sometimes amusing, situations and eras.
Yet, it was during the filming of Jane B par Agnès V that the pair had the idea for another film with a more traditional narrative structure. For the first time, Birkin wrote her own screenplay, finally asserting herself as the author after years of singing songs written by Gainsbourg and appearing in movies where she had no control over her role. Now, with the help of Varda, a revolutionary feminist filmmaker, she tapped into a world that was unshackled from patriarchal expectations and objectification.
Birkin revealed a creative side that few had expected, with the actor choosing to explore an illicit romance between a 40-something-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy in her film Kung Fu Master!, otherwise known as Le Petit Amour. While Birkin came up with the story, Varda directed the movie, and her penchant for self-reflexivity works well here. Birkin’s character is called Mary-Jane, signalling an element of truth – but not quite. Meanwhile, her own daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon star as her children, with Varda’s son, Mathieu Demy, playing Birkin’s love interest.
The movie sees Mary-Jane assist the young Julien as he throws up at her daughter’s party, and from that first meeting, she finds herself strangely infatuated. It’s an incredibly controversial theme, and in the hands of any other director, you’d be wary, but with Varda at the helm, the film becomes a philosophical and complex narrative about a woman adrift and lonely. She asks us how far we’ll go in understanding the actions that Mary-Jane engages in, with Varda making sure to highlight the messy and uncomfortable nature of this unusual relationship.
It’s an intimate and often playful film, with Mary-Jane’s obsession with Julien causing her confusion. Yet, she can’t help herself, it seems, and she attempts to track him down at all of the local spots that house his favourite arcade game, Kung Fu Master!. Emphasising his youth, Varda draws upon both Julien’s love for games and his attempts to act older than he is, routinely contrasting this with Mary-Jane’s bizarre infatuation and her moments of snapping back into reality.
When the pair kiss in a lift, a mirror reflecting the taboo moment on the other side of the screen, Mary-Jane gives in to Julien’s advances, only to slap him once he whips out a cigarette. What she’s really doing is slapping herself, punishing herself for expressing a romantic interest in a child who, more than anything, just likes to play arcade games. What does she want out of him? It seems she is not quite sure, but she likes the simplicity of being around him, and that’s enough to keep her interested for an extended period, leading her to take him on a holiday by the coast with her youngest daughter, Lou.
The holiday is shot picturesquely, but what is hard to ignore is the set-up of the trip. Julien simply looks like her son, and they play and eat together alongside the four-year-old Lou, acting like a disjointed family unit. Her interest in spending time with Julien perhaps reflects her fear of getting older – the theme of Jane B par Agnès V – but for Mary-Jane, this manifests in a very uncomfortable way. But Varda isn’t scared of exploring difficult topics, and she manages to do so here with extreme precision, refusing to glorify Mary-Jane’s actions by depicting the natural consequences of her actions – she loses custody of one of her children and never sees Julien again.
This isn’t really a film about illegal age-gap relationships. At its core, Varda and Birkin aim to dissect what it means to get older and suddenly feel far away from youth, but they only take this to the extreme and explore what happens when these emotions are cranked to the next level. With great performances all around, Kung Fu Master! is a complicated yet fascinating film that allowed Birkin to push herself creatively in a way she never had done before.
