A
living “prototype” of the present millennium’s trendy, zany
Channel-hopping “Eurostars,” British actress and singer Jane Birkin is
better known in France — her country of adoption for the past three
decades — than she is in England or America. However, in an
extraordinary showbiz turnabout, she’s riding on the crest of an
ongoing “Anglo fascination” for all things with a sleek “Gallic twist,”
not least “electro” DJs with a “French Touch”… and is currently
enjoying worldwide success with a concert tour based on her most recent
album titled “Arabesque.” Birkin, who’s appeared in some 30 motion
pictures to date, stars in “Merci… Dr Rey!” a Merchant Ivory Production
written for her by first-time filmmaker Andrew Litvack — to be released
here at the beginning of December.
The epitome of
“Swinging London” during the ’60s, “Calamity Jane” made a huge
impression on international audiences, when cast as one of the two
mini-skirted fashion models featured in a “rough-and-tumble” nude photo
shoot scene, which propelled Antonioni’s 1964 movie “Blow Up” to
instant cult status. She married “James Bond theme” composer John Barry
“too young,” then took “French leave”… In Paris, at a screen test for
Pierre Grimblat’s “Slogan,” Birkin bumped into Serge Gainsbourg with
whom she recorded “Je t’aime moi non plus,” an infamously steamy
“orgasmic cross-Channel chart-topper” which he’d originally penned for
Brigitte Bardot. And, the rest of their helter-skelter domestic saga is
history… Jane B. became Gainsbourg’s muse, her “signature” upper-crust
English accent adding a zest of quirky humanity to his urbanely poetic,
often painful or ironic, lyrics.
Her newfound Parisian “Pygmalion” — himself a self-styled “dandy” with
a “conspicuously addictive personality” (drink, cigarettes, the sky’s
the limit!) — encouraged her to emphasize her so-called “androgynous”
silhouette by sporting boyish attire such as jeans and vest-like white
T-shirts, notably in a scandal-provoking movie with an ambivalent,
homosexual edge, which he directed in the mid-’70s, also called “Je
t’aime moi non plus.” Paradoxically, this look was perceived as
“très
sexy.”
A fresh take on the “Gainsbourg Touch,” “Arabesque” is the result of a
timely “transcultural” collaboration. Via virtuoso violinist Djamel
Benyelles’s baroquely ethnic arrangements performed in association with
Chebs Khaled and Mami — along with Fred Maggi at the piano, Amel Riahi
el Mansouri playing the lute, Aziz Boularoug on percussion and Moumen
touted for her “soaring vocal talents” — Jane Birkin revisits the
repertoire of her longtime companion, who died in 1991, about ten years
after their separation.
Given its “French Connection” and “Arab-esque” rhythms — in the present
climate of Franco-American relations, sparked by the war in Iraq — the
show could have met with hostile reactions, when it crossed the
Atlantic. However, Serge Gainsbourg’s earthly “ambassadress” claims
that “though, simplistically, it could have been considered a potential
threat,” this wasn’t the case. “I can’t kid myself, the first concert
was in New York, at the Alliance Française, with people who
obviously
love French culture, but it was exhilarating, very touching... In
Miami, they actually got up and danced! Finally, they don’t seem that
worried over there — they don’t seem to think that they’ll lose money
or anything! After all, they’ve asked us to do Carnegie Hall in 2004!”
Jane, who has three daughters — Kate (a photographer, by John Barry),
Charlotte (an actress, by Serge Gainsbourg) and Lou (also an actress,
by films d’auteur director Jacques Doillon), describes this global tour
as a “perfect world” experience, a family affair: “Everywhere we go,
it’s the same… At the end, people stand up and cry — 5 000 of them in
Constantinople, Turkey, where Serge’s family fled the Revolution! To
see Charlotte’s son Ben sitting there, at the back…that was something!”
Birkin finds the “Arabesque” concept “totally in keeping” with Serge
Gainsbourg’s humor and sense of tragedy. And, “his gypsy, suitcase and
fiddle edge.” On March 2, at the Théâtre du
Châtelet, she’ll be
concluding this two-year circuit with a “milestone” performance,
“exactly 14 years after Serge died.” Of Gainsbourg’s growing popularity
“on the other side of the Channel,” she says… “Young people miss him
because they never knew him, and they wish they had.”
In between “Arabesque” gigs, she has been promoting “Merci… Dr Rey!”…
Like another cinematic icon — Catherine Deneuve — Jane Birkin is
willing to take the risk of working with fledgling filmmakers. Could
this, in some way, account for the longevity of her love affair with
the French public? “What risk…? You can’t imagine how fortunate you
feel when somebody comes to you with a story that’s been specially
written for you. He could have got the project started with all kinds
of actresses, and I really mean anybody! But, for two years, he
insisted that it was me he wanted… Litvack is one of the funniest
Americans I know! For the sheer lunacy of his ideas… My character is an
actress who literally feels like vomiting whenever she sees Vanessa
Redgrave — whose voice she dubs in the French versions of her films. At
one point, she walks into a room only to find that the dress that she’s
wearing matches the wallpaper… and of course Redgrave is there!”
According to “sources close to the artist,” Birkin “never stops.” “If
Jane has an empty space in her agenda, she gets depressed.” She’s
already started recording her next CD, out in April: a series of duets
(of her own making) that she’ll be singing with various prominent
“mondo” artists, and she’s come up with a storyline for a full-length
feature named “Boxes,” which she’ll be shooting this spring. Top of the
bill? Her “actress mum” Judy Campbell — who’ll be playing her mother,
alongside her.
The real-life Birkin lives on the Left Bank, but also has a rambling
house, dubbed “Chacalou” (“a contraction of Charlotte and Lou”), in
L’Aber Wrach, a place on the coast of Brittany whose winds are so rough
“that there’s no autumn, the leaves don’t stay on the trees, they get
blown off immediately.” This is where, her father, “a brilliant
navigator” in the resistance during WWII, carried out 68 missions,
dropping his clandestine charges off in pitch dark and going straight
back… “When he was 25 and I didn’t know him yet,” concludes Jane,
wistfully.
