The relationship between the Gainsbourg women in "Charlotte on Jane" is marked by the spirit of Paris

The bohemian Gainsbourg clan seems to need no introduction: singer and actress Jane Birkin, musician Serge Gainsbourg, their daughter actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. Charlotte takes on the role of director and turns the camera on her mother in her debut film. In a warm and sensitive documentary from the Cannes Film Festival, two talented women open up not only to the audience, but also to each other. The film "Charlotte about Jane" ("Jane par Charlotte") starts showing in Lithuania from Friday.

The director of this film is the charismatic French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is best known to the Lithuanian audience from the Danish director Lars von Trier's films "Melancholia", "Antichrist" and "Nymphomaniac", as well as from Romain Gary's novel "Dawn's Promise", in which this French actress played the writer's mother, Mina Kacewa. This time, she talks to her mother, the actress and singer Jane Birkin, on the screen, not to mention the biggest culprit of this bohemian family - her father, Serge Gainsbourg, who died three decades ago. The upcoming Mother's Day is an ideal opportunity to hear an open and sensitive dialogue between mother and daughter.

To create the film "Charlotte about Jane", the French actress was inspired by looking back at the passing of time, which mercilessly pulls ties even between the closest and dearest people. Charlotte felt this for six years while living with her family (her husband is also the film actor and director Yvan Attalis; children are Ben (24), Alice (19) and Jo (10)) in New York, which she chose as a kind of "exile" city when when Charlotte's fake sister Kate Barry (Jane Birkin's daughter from her first marriage to British musician John Barry) passed away eight years ago. Wanting to escape from oppressive Paris, she gradually began to miss him and felt a strong need to strengthen the bond with her mother.

The Paris of the 7s and 9s was never constrained by any conjunctures: it was full of hippy freedom, formed by bobo (bourgeois-bohème) in the social stratum, when the bourgeois lifestyle began to flirt with the bohemian one, when the left-wing ideas of intellectuals (Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Roland Barthe, etc.) matured, which turned revolutionary into the May riots of 1968. It is in this context that the name of film and music creator Serge Gainsbourg, who has become an icon of bohemian culture, is extremely significant. Next to people like Jacques Brel, Claude Montana, Charles Aznavour. Saint-Germain was full of jazz and while the students were building barricades, Serge Gainsbourg was having a love affair with Brigitte Bardot and was recording the cult song "I love you... and I'm not anymore" (Je tʼaime... moi non plus) in a small room. But the love idyll with the French beauty icon of the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, Brigitte Bardot, did not last three months, as the British singer and actress Jane Birkin appeared on the horizon. When they met on the set of Slogan, directed by Pierre Grimblat, Jane and Serge were not separated for twelve years and were known as the most bohemian couple in Paris. Although Brigitte Bardot claimed the authorship of the said song for a long time, the song performed with Jane Birkin became a global hit, and women were simply giddy. With big ears and a big nose, the man sang in such a voice and played the guitar in such a way that the fair sex definitely rewrote all the canons of male beauty in the scale of their feelings.

Twelve years of this couple's bohemian life were marked by the birth of their daughter Charlotte. She is said to have grown up as a baby in a basket that the couple carried around Paris to recording studios and filming locations. Charlotte grew up with her older sister, Kate, under the care of a nanny, as the parents woke up when the children were enjoying midday and returned from nighttime Paris at dawn.

"The film was a great tool to get rid of shyness, to get rid of the inexplicable feeling of shame and awkwardness. It was hard for both of us to hide our feelings. Neither of us are new to the screen, and the camera has never caused us too much discomfort – we are professional actresses, after all – but when the eyes of mother and daughter meet, it's impossible not to get excited. And the father? When my mother and I visited his apartment, which she had not set foot in since his death in 1991, and found men's Repetto Zizi shoes, a confiscated pack of Gitanes cigarettes, a lighter, several boxes of canned food; when we saw a chandelier hanging in the bathroom, an advertising poster of Brigitte Bardot; we even found perfume that mom ordered from a perfumer especially for dad - all these emotions gave birth to the idea of ​​establishing a museum here. That's why it was worth making this film", says Charlotte frankly.

The film "Charlotte about Jane" in Lithuanian cinemas from April 29. And you can be the first to see it in "Romuva" on April 28. at the pre-premiere of the "European Cinema Travels" project.

Movie trailer with Lithuanian subtitles:  https://youtu.be/o-a8qBy7EBY?t=10

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