Movie review: Intimate portrait of a mother in Jane couple Charlotte

Jane Birkin and

her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg are so well known in the cultural sphere that they do not even need any surnames:

.

This is how you can at least interpret the film title.

Or it alludes to Agnès Varda's film

, in which the filmmaker deconstructs Birkin by letting her play various roles, such as classical muse, a femme fatale and comedy.

It seems to be

director Gainsbourg's ambition to show the private side of the French national treasure, the fashion icon and the singer who also happens to be a mother, grandmother and widow.

For Gainsbourg does not spend a minute explaining Birkin's background, career or artistry, which is both liberating and arrogant.

Either the audience is assumed to know who Jane Birkin is (which is likely) or her career is not relevant here.

A third interpretation of the title is therefore a sign of intimacy, this is after all a daughter's documentary about her mother.

the.

Gainsbourg begins with a stylish conversation in which she explains to her mother why she wants to film her: "Pointing the camera at you is my excuse to look at you".

They slip into an equally tentative talk about childhood and Birkin tells how much she admired her young daughter's body, so much so that she once asked to touch it.

It's intimate but strangely enough does not feel personal.

Nor does the photo session that follows where Gainsbourg documents his mother's wrinkles as they talk about the decay of the body.

But this is also the most theatrical part of the film.

The rest is a mix of free thought and artistic collage interspersed with everyday and constructed scenes: Jane Birkin makes lambs, sings on big stages in New York, visits a dog breeder, for conversations under a blanket…

Sometimes

the situations are convoluted, sometimes far too ordinary and bland.

But from time to time, they end up in conversations that linger.

Where mother and daughter not only approach the difficult subjects but dare to dive into them.

Like the pain of losing a child and a sister.

Like the tragedy of no longer recognizing his face.

For Jane Birkin as a singer and fashion icon lives in the memory of culture and the fashion world only as she once was.

But here the daughter tries to both find her and preserve her as she is now.

Usually she bites.

But when she succeeds, the hair-raising is fantastic.