"Gainsbourg was not a sexual predator", defends Aude Turpault

In the post-MeToo era, the relationships that Serge Gainsbourg entered into with young women at the end of his life, raise some concerns… They tell their story to "20 Minutes 

Serge Gainsbourg on the set of the show "Zenith" in 1988. -

GINIES / SIPA

Serge Gainsbourg maintained a friendship with Aude Turpault from 1985 to 1991, when she was only 13 years old when they met.
At the end of his life, Serge Gainsbourg had a love affair with Constance Meyer, 16, and with Marie-Marie, 19.
All three have written about their relationship with Serge Gainsbourg, they tell

20 minutes about
the last years of the man with the head of cabbage.

They dated Serge Gainsbourg during the last years of his life.

5bis

(Around the book), published in 2011, then in

5bis, rue de Gainsbourg

, available on the site of the same name, Aude Turpault tells the story of an extraordinary friendship between an unloved teenager, her friend Anne and Serge Gainsbourg when she was 13 to 18 years old.

La Jeune fille et Gainsbourg

(l'Archipel), published in 2010, Constance Meyer recounts her tender, loving and passionate romance with the cabbage-headed man, born when she was 16 autumns and he, 57 summers.

Behind the pseudonym Marie-Marie hides the author of the autofiction

He Was a Goose

(Fauves), who will be released this Thursday, the one who was the old dandy's lover at the age of 19.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his disappearance, they tell

20 Minutes about

their Serge Gainsbourg.

Your first with Serge Gainsbourg?

Aude Turpault.

We would hang out with a friend every Wednesday in front of 5bis, rue de Verneuil between fans.

One day when it was raining, I rang three knocks, not knowing that it was the secret code for him to open.

I asked him to take a photo.

He was amused.

With a little nerve, I asked him if we could visit.

He gave us the guided tour and we stayed all evening.

We went back the next day… This is how we came into his life.

Constance Meyer.

I met Serge Gainsbourg after writing to him the day before a long letter of 5 pages that I slipped under his door at 5bis, rue de Verneuil.

It was December 5, 1985 at 8 p.m.

He invited me to dinner to thank me.

We went to the restaurant, he was funny and gave me his whole repertoire of jokes!

He was both the director and the actor.

I was captivated by his charm and intelligence.

He was very classy and very simple.

Marie-Marie.

Kid, I was first fascinated by the beauty of Birkin, I adored him, and I immediately liked Gainsbourg's music.

I was listening to very old songs, the days of

Jazz in the Ravine

I sent him a letter as a kid where I told him: "You are my idol and at school, I fight to defend you".

He called me to thank me.

A few years later, someone gave me their number.

I called him and told him I wanted to meet him.

He offered to join him at the Ferber studio where he was recording an ad.

I was really very impressed.

I ran into him again on the set of an Indochina music video, he recognized me and said: “You have my number, don't you?

So call me whenever you want.

I called him back the next day.

How would you describe your relationship?

It was a very friendly and filial relationship.

Serge was a child and my youth reminded him of his old days, his youth.

When I started this relationship, I was really fascinated, proud that he was interested in me.

When we went out, people looked at us.

Every time I returned home, I was over the moon, euphoric and wrote down everything that had happened.

Gradually, I realized that there was a gap between the character I had loved and the one he had become.

Artistically, I got to know him on these last two albums, which were still not very good.

I gradually realized the decline, but I was still fascinated.

He had charming sides.

He was incredibly generous, and yet he wasn't that rich.

On rereading my book, I noticed that he was very self-centered: we listened to his music, except once Elvis Presley, we watched the films in which he had played or that he had shot.

He needed to be reassured about this all the time.

What has this relationship brought you?

AT A

lot of things, as I was a little lost.

Like many, I had a difficult childhood.

He was the first person to be kind to me, to show me that I could have qualities, and coming from him, it is hyperporteur.

He has been a friend, a tutor and a teacher.

Maturity.

I was very eager for culture, crazy for poetry, I did a bachelor's degree in modern letters, obsessed with literature, and Serge reinforced my initiation.

He brought me culture, literature, painting, poetry, art in general on a silver platter, it was exciting!

Dreams, of course!

I entered a universe that I should never have had access to, and that I dreamed of as a child.

Moreover, in the first version of the book, the epilogue ended with "We do not see chimeras".

The relationship has been enriching and it has made me mature.

What do you think she brought him?

I learned from someone close to Serge that he had told him that “with me, it was good, because he didn't have to force himself”.

I was touched when I heard about this.

With my girlfriend and I, he could be himself, be natural.

He didn't need to pretend or put on his gallery entertainer or provocateur costume.

He was just himself.

I hope I brought it lightness and authenticity.

My youth, my spontaneity, my naturalness.

Serge was very famous and people were unnatural or interested, not me.

A somewhat critical look that perhaps the others no longer dared to have with him.

In the end, I'm not gentle with him… That was what he liked about me, sometimes I scolded him.

What made you want to write about this relationship?

His biographer, Gilles Verlant asked me to write anecdotes, once a day.

What I have done.

He told me he thought it would make a nice book and suggested that I add what was going on around like my life at school etc.

It has become a manuscript.

What drove me to do it was the fear of forgetting.

I also wanted people to discover the intimate Gainsbourg, more facetious, more tormented, and also lighter.

My teenage gaze on this man a little hurt, a little bruised at the end of his life.

It just happened.

Chance.

Twenty years after his death.

But, in fact, I had to write, both to remove a heavy secret and at the same time to pay homage to it.

My book is dedicated to my friend Carole.

When I got home, I wrote him long letters of 10 to 15 pages.

I told him everything, but it wasn't a diary.

Three years after his death, I asked him for the letters after I broke up with the famous Hippo from the book.

I wanted to impress him, write this story and publish it to make him come back.

I sent it to a few publishing houses, but it didn't work.

Some contacted me, but were afraid of the reaction of rights holders.

As I had sent to Albin Michel, Gilles Verlant used certain passages.

I was not happy.

I sued him, and didn't go to the end, I got a little compensation.

In your three books, Serge Gainsbourg appears a bit like a kid, deeply sad ...

Completely!

This little boy side was deep inside him.

He remained so until the end with this desire to play pranks, as with us: stealing books from stores, throwing dirt at passers-by, causing a mess in restaurants or taxis or playing football. in hotels.

And at the same time, he had these moments of unfathomable sadness, very complicated for us, who were between 13 and 18 years old to deal with.

The mission I had given myself at the time was to make him smile.

I wanted to keep him from crying and I did everything to, like not highlighting Jane's records, that he didn't go into melancholy.

It was complicated to get him out of this state.

He was very weak, tired and losing his eyesight.

He had this lucidity that he didn't have much longer to live and told us that he was going to die soon.

He was sad, that's right, but funny too, sort of a cheerful sad clown kid, a lucid artist, and clowns know that the bottom of life is sad.

He was a poet, a visionary.

He was still very childish, even in his behavior.

Deeply sad and deeply alone.

How do you see his work in the light of cancel culture?

I don't see the problem with his work, after if we talk about his attitude sometimes on the TV set, there, perhaps, I can understand.

For

Lemon Incest

, there is no debate insofar as it clearly says: "This is the love that we will never make together".

It was only provocation as he knew so well, there is nothing unhealthy behind.

Melody Nelson

is not a true story, maybe today it looks like she was 18.

It is the work of an avant-garde artist.

Serge was pure, very timid, who liked to provoke.

To surpass oneself.

But there is nothing impure about him, only provocation in the face of the media.

But, in everyday life, Serge was simple, and not at all provocative, on the contrary, very shy and brought up with rigor, that was felt all the time.

The success came curiously when the work was no longer at the top. On the last album,

Suck Baby Suck

, nullissime, would go less well with the #MeToo movement!

He adored

Nabokov's

Lolita

I gave him the first draft,

L'Enchanteur.

At the time of

Melody Nelson, it

was in the order of fantasy and aesthetics, to make his Lolita to him.

Looking back, how do you see your relationship with him in the post MeToo era?

Today mom, I will not let my children go ring the doorbell of someone famous or a stranger and spend sleepless nights there!

I would warn them that they might run into a predator.

I had knowledge of the story with Constance, she had the sexual majority and it was agreed.

We're talking about a love story.

There was no hold, nothing unhealthy.

There was nothing of a sexual predator in Serge Gainsbourg, unlike Gabriel Matzneff.

These men are constantly on the hunt, this was not at all the case with Serge Gainsbourg, not at all!

On the contrary, he was very benevolent and respectful of who we were: when I called my mother, he left the room.

I never felt manipulated by him, ever!

I will relive this story exactly as it happened.

I thank my mother for letting us live it, if she had been, like me, a protective mother, I would have missed this story.

She trusted us, and trusted him, above all, in him.

I understand that one wonders about a teenager who spends sleepless nights with an older man, but, if we look at this story in particular, it is very beautiful.

A great memory.

Serge has always been very classy, a noble.

He was a rigorous dandy.

No overflow.

Oddly, the older he got, the younger his audience got, and he found himself surrounded by little women.

The first time he told me about Constance, without mentioning her name, where he told me that at the moment he was dating a 16-year-old girl, I was deeply shocked.

I did not really represent the figure of the Lolita, I was 19 years old.

What place does Serge Gainsbourg occupy in your life today?

He is still very present and has had an influence on my life, that's obvious.

I live my adult life.

Serge died thirty years ago, I have my life, but I very often walk past the cemetery and thank him for everything he has given me.

There was a time when I told a lot around me that I had known him and that I had been one of his mistresses.

I do not do it anymore.

People are also talking less and less about him.

There, we talk about it a lot, because it's been thirty years.

My son's generation does not know Gainsbourg's work, it is a pity and sadness.

There is something else than these last two albums!

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Incest
Culture
MeToo
Serge Gainsbourg