Joann Sfar's Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, adapted by Mr. Sfar from his own graphic novel of the same name, drifts for much of its extended runtime like a stream of Technicolor tobacco smoke, not unlike the sensual puff escaping the titular songwriter, crooner, pianist and infamous pussy hound's lips on the film's original poster. Floating through a long string of famous lovers (and a good amount of not so famous ones), Gainsbourg's life is presented by Sfar as a phantasmagorical bachelor party, replete with fantastical doubles, endowed with lecherous humor and largely unburdened by any sort of emotional gravitas, even when confronted with the Nazi occupation. Born Lucien Ginsburg (Kacey Mottet Klein), a French Jew living with two sisters and his demanding but loving parents, Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino) was a musical prodigy bathed in cinematic myth and thusly, Sfar has a time drenching this affable pageant in sex and pop psychology, and fitting it with a leisurely voiceover. Bouncing not so quickly from his youthful days of piano lessons with his fathers and imagined dates with flirtatious art models to his first proper love affair with, and short-lived marriage to, Elisabeth Levitsky (Deborah Grall), a friend of Salvador Dali and assistant to George Hugnet, who Gainsbourg refers to as "Hippolady" upon exiting their relationship, Sfar's film offers some ravishing visual delicacies. But it's also burdened by its rigidly linear progression. Gainsbourg's love life becomes a humorous, if somewhat plodding mess about halfway in, leaving his exchanges with the imaginary Professor Flipus (the immensely talented Duncan Jones) to pick up the slack.
Professor Flipus, an exaggerated creature with a beak that would scare off a pelican, is the most outrageous of Sfar's creations, not to mention the most unpredictable vision in this tragically predictable film. Like most biopics, Sfar's picture accentuates the two major romances of Gainsbourg's life, beginning with his partnership with Brigitte Bardot, played here, somewhat convincingly, by model Laetitia Casta. One of the more enjoyable sequences in the film details a songwriting process between the two, climaxing with Casta dancing wildly with only a bed sheet to cover herself, but it's not nearly as funny as Gainsbourg and his later partner, Jane Birkin (the late Lucy Gordon), playing their orgasmic collaboration, "Je t'aime...noi non plus", for a sweaty exec. The synthesis of Bardot and Gainsbourg's brilliantly untamed "Bonnie & Clyde" is given, sadly, less attention.
Gainsbourg's relationships with equally fascinating figures, such as Juliette Greco (Anna Mouglalis), Boris Vian (Philippe Katerine), and France Gall (Sara Forestier), are inexplicably given far less time than even Gainsbourg's final love, Bambou (Mylene Jampanoi), whom he picks up at a night club. Indeed, the film is at its best when Gainsbourg's charismatic, unlikely troubadour vibe is embraced, giving the proceedings the air of an intoxicated odyssey. This comes through in the film's earlier passages but it ends not too long into his tryst with Bardot. Things go from middling to borderline unbearable when Gainsbourg inevitably suffers a series of tragedies, beginning with his father's death and ending with Birkin leaving him in his late years, not long after he records a reggae version of "La Marseillaise" and lands in the hospital due to his excessive smoking.
Still, if Sfar's film isn't nearly as heroic as the film's title, ironic or not, announces it to be, it maintains an engaging weightlessness and Elmosnino, so good in last year's The Father of My Children, holds the screen with admirable, animated charm. There are several trappings that come about when attempting to depict an icon and if Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life indulges in about half of them and only slightly contorts the other half, it's still superior to the rigid mimicry and unimaginative direction of the oft-maligned Walk the Line or even the marginally more appealing Ray. And if Sfar's film, with its bold color flourishes and demented humor, does nothing more than get a few neophytes interested in Gainsbourg's work, it's hardly the worst thing that could happen.
aka Gainsbourg (Vie Heroique)
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