• Documentary Jane Birkin: "With Serge Gainsbourg we were drunk and sleeping pills all day"

  • Interview Jane Birkin: "I'm not an icon"

With a spy father and an actress mother, Jane Birkin (London, 1946) grew up in Marylebone writing a diary with pages dedicated to her stuffed animal Munkey.

As she grew older she crossed paths with the

Swinging Sixties

, the cultural revolution that fueled British youth thirsty for modernism.

The invasion of

the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks

;

Mary Quant's miniskirt;

Twiggy's fashion;

the ruckus in the King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street;

political activism and

sexual liberation

ushered in the riotous 1960s.

Jane Birkin, in the middle of that bubble, made herself into acting.

She began by standing out in a fleeting role for Michelangelo Antonioni's film

Blow

Up

,

which was awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, going on to be directed in front of the camera by

Agnès Varda

, Jacques Rivette or Jacques Deray.

She was filming

Slogan

, by Pierre Grimblat, when everything changed.

Serge Gainsbourg

appeared in the life of Jane Birkin in 1968 - when she was 22 years old and he was 20 years older.

She was already known for her movie roles and lived in bohemian Paris.

He, the

enfant terrible

de la

chanson

, was a giant in French cultural circles.

Since then, one could not exist without the other and, although their relationship ended after twelve years together, their love remained

fervent until the end

.

Since then, when the artist, now

75 years old

, speaks with a refined French accent, the name she repeats the most is his.

Serge Gainsbourg.

Even on his new album,

Oh!

Pardon tu dormais

, the spirit of his great love flies over lyrics and sneaks into the melodies of memory.

It is early in the morning.

It's hot and the coffee starts to come out.

I wonder if it's too early.

I pick up the phone and say to myself, 'If it rings three times and she doesn't pick up, I'll call her later.'

Negative.

A whisper sounds from the other end, a

light and elegant

bonjour

.

Hello, Jane, good morning, how is Paris dawning?

I haven't opened the curtains, but maybe it's raining, just like yesterday.

Maybe not.


I'm calling you to tell me what your new songs are about, written this time by yourself.

Hmm... I was inspired by a play I performed 30 years ago.

It talks about a woman who can't sleep and who wakes up the man next to her.

She starts asking him questions that he doesn't seem to want to answer.

Her type of love was passion, love at first sight, and that has something fatalistic about it because this girl lives in the regret of those who no longer have passion.

I turned the dialogue into songs, thus creating a concept album. How did her love affair with music begin?


I didn't have a love affair with music, to be honest.

I sang with Serge (Gainsbourg)

Je t'aime moi non plus,

which became very famous, because she didn't want anyone else to do it, especially people who were attracted to Serge.

Then the song caused a bit of a scandal and the head of the record company sent us back to England to do another 10 songs for a new album.

It was surprising that it was banned by both the Vatican and the BBC.

We do not regret it, on the contrary.

I want that song to play when I die. Speaking of Serge, does the figure of him also fly in this work?


Serge is always there.

Anyone who has heard him will know that he transformed the French language into music, which means that anyone who came after him was influenced by him;

as it has been for the musicians I've worked with on this album.

Serge changed everything.

That's why I love to sing

Ballade by

Melody Nelson

, because I see the audience happy and I feel like we pay tribute to them, and that's always my favorite part of the show.

Now the public that awaits you is that of Spain. Do you want to perform here?


Yes. I have not visited the country much, but every time I go it is a pleasure.

And this time, above all, I really want to see Geraldine Chaplin, because she is probably one of the most spectacular artists in the world.

She is extraordinary.

Seeing Geraldine, even from afar, is something that fills my heart.

She also fills her heart with writing diaries. What do you like about them and what don't you like?

She once said: 'When I read my diaries, I find myself extremely tired.'


If you read them you would realize how boring I am.

I only find them interesting for the time they describe.

And because in newspapers you don't invent things.

The newspapers don't lie.

People ask you the same thing about the same stories and in the end you don't know if they were true or not because I've been telling them for a long time.

The diaries are truer.

I like to read people's diaries, they are full of details.

Even those of the queen of England. We know the beginnings of Elizabeth II, but how would she narrate the beginning of her own story?

I think it all started with

Je t'aime con non plus

.

Until then people said that he had 'a beautiful face', which led me to meet Serge and appear on one of his covers.

He wanted me to accompany him to all the concerts, to all the television programs.

He wanted me to be a star until he made me one.

As Miss Higgins in

My First Lady

(1965).

It was all thanks to him.

Nobody had recognized me as an artist before.

I once did a whole musical and no one realized it was my own voice.

Serge only.

Jane Birkin, at 75 years old, continues to sing to life -and to him, the name she repeats the most- and writing truths in her diary.

When Gainsbourg died in 1991, the artist spent three days with her body, not wanting to let it go.

When they were about to bury the musician, Birkin placed Munkey in the coffin and her confessions went with him;

part of a diary of a life that she is still writing today through songs.

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