Candor, audacity, twig size, delicious accent mistakes: Jane Birkin, who died at 76, will remain the favorite Englishwoman of the French, inseparable from Serge Gainsbourg, of whom she was the muse and ambassador.
“When I see the French listen to songs that are forty years old, I know that they are part of their history. But they too are part of mine,” the artist summed up when his diary was published in 2018. munkey diaries. Jane Birkin was found dead on Sunday at her home in Paris.
Androgynous silhouette and pout of a woman-child, incarnation of bohemian-chic, this icon led a fine career as an actress and singer, also inspiring fashion designers.
Long after the death of Serge Gainsbourg in 1991, and despite hardships such as the disappearance of her daughter Kate, in 2013, then a leukemia that took a long time to heal, she always sang the work of the one with whom she formed a mythical couple. in the 70s.
“I love you, me neither”
Daughter of a great resistance fighter, David Birkin, who died the day of Serge’s funeral, and of a renowned actress, Judy Campbell, she was born on December 14, 1946 in London. She is noticed in the cinema in Blow-up by Michelangelo Antonioni (Palme d’or 67 at Cannes), where his nudity caused a scandal.
She was under 20 when she married English composer John Barry, 13 years her senior. The couple have a daughter, Kate. He leaves her and she decides to try her luck in Paris. In 1968, on the set of the film Slogan of Pierre Grimblat, she meets Gainsbourg.
Forever united in the collective imagination, they embody the unbridled creativity of an era. They have a daughter, Charlotte.
Jane puts her voice in 1969 – “erotic year” – on the sulphurous I love you, me neither. Brigitte Bardot had banned the release of the initial version of which she was the interpreter, at the time of her affair with “The Man with the Head of Cabbage”. It is a success. In 1971, fate Melody Nelson’s Storyconcept album designed by Gainsbourg around Jane, commercial failure when it was released, then became a classic.
In 1980, she left “Gainsbarre”, drowned in alcohol, sometimes violent. “She threw me and it was good for my face, me who broke hers” he dropped in the Inrocks in 1987.
She became the companion of the filmmaker Jacques Doillon, for 13 years, and had a daughter with him, Lou.
Often confined to the roles of nunuches, she began her reconversion into auteur cinema. “Despite appearances, I have something infinitely sad inside me, a terrible sense of guilt that hasn’t left me since childhood. Jacques guessed that in me, ”she explained.
The Birkin bag
In the credits of some 70 films, it has been chosen by signatures such as Jacques Rivette, Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, James Ivory or Agnès Varda. Without ever departing from her humility: she claims to have an “instinct” of actress but no “talent”.
His relationship with Doillon does not prevent him from continuing to sing Gainsbourg. And him to continue to write for her. In particular, she records Baby Alone in Babylon (1983), which will go gold.
But it was not until she was over 40, in 1987, that she finally made her stage debut at the Bataclan in Paris, followed by the Casino de Paris and the Olympia. Female performer of the year at the Victoires de la musique 92 in France, (then rewarded with a Victory of Honor for her career in 2021), she is on all fronts: she plays in the theater, gives concerts in France and elsewhere, makes a first film Oh ! Sorry you were sleeping (about a couple falling apart, inspired by her relationship with Barry).
In 1999, released her first disc without Gainsbourg, with songs written for her by French singer-songwriters like Françoise Hardy or Alain Souchon. In 2008, appeared the first album of which she wrote all the texts, winter children. She will do it again in 2020 with the superb Oh ! Sorry you were sleepinga disc created with the French composer and performer Étienne Daho.
Dredged by brands (there is even a Birkin bag at Hermès), the artist is also involved in humanitarianism and ecology. But she always came back to Gainsbourg, playing her pieces in 2018 with a classical orchestra: Birkin Gainsbourg the symphonic.
“Coming back to Serge once again: I couldn’t find anything better”, confided the “little Baby Doll” who knew how to sublimate her texts so well.