Jane Birkin will long remain the favorite Englishwoman of the French. In Paris, the young girl from a good family, a discreet figure in Swingin’ London, reinvented herself as a singer and the muse of Serge Gainsbourg without ever losing that little accent recognizable among a thousand. She was only 21 when she entered the musician’s life, with her baby, Kate, born of her marriage to film music composer John Barry, under her arm. Together, they will form the most emblematic couple of Paris in the 1970s. Under the appearance of a malleable muse, Jane Birkin will profoundly influence Gainsbourg in turn, allowing her to develop the very photogenic character dressed in jeans, Repetto ballet slippers, jacket and stubble.
Daughter of a famous pre-war London actress, Judy Campbell, and David Birkin, a figure in the Royal Navy, Jane Mallory Birkin grew up in the Chelsea district of London. Excessively shy, she was brought up to become a model wife. What she becomes, at only 18, when she marries playboy John Barry, a composer celebrated for his work on the soundtracks of the James Bond series. At his side, she remains an unobtrusive wife, appearing in a few films as an actress. “In a Newsweek article about John, a photo caption read: ‘John Barry with his E-Type Jaguar and his E-Type wife.’ Cruel, but true. Not for a second did I imagine then that I had any interest, ”she told us.
After a few fleeting appearances in forgotten films, she toured in particular in 1966 in Antonioni’s masterpiece, Blow Up, a scathing chronicle of Swingin’ London. We owe him one of the first nude scenes in the history of British cinema. She also appears in the psychedelic Wonderwall, whose soundtrack is signed by George Harrison, of the Beatles, with which she climbs the steps of the Cannes Film Festival in 1968. This is not her first visit to France. Still a teenager, she had lived as an au pair in the building in the 16th arrondissement of Paris where Edith Piaf lived. It was in 1968, when she passed a Parisian casting for the film Slogan, by Pierre Grimblat, that she met Serge Gainsbourg for the first time. Bruised by his break with Bardot, steeped in cynicism, the forties hoped to give the reply to Marisa Berenson. He snubs this little unknown English girl and makes her life hard. “‘Serge seemed to me to be an extremely arrogant and self-confident person, the idea of his superiority was very humiliating: yet he was very honest, I simply didn’t interest him at all…’.
In order for the couple to be credible on screen, the director is forced to organize a dinner, which he voluntarily forgets to go to, leaving them alone. The result will exceed his expectations: the couple will exist, in his film, but also in life. It was then that he was stepping on her toes during a slow in Régine’s club, a few days later, that Jane succumbed to the charm of the forties. “ I fell in love with him for his shyness, his clumsiness…”
Jane Birkin leaves London behind to land in the French capital, which she will never leave. “If I left my country, it was to dare things elsewhere. In England, at best, I would have been a James Bond girl. And again, I didn’t have the right measurements! “. Serge Gainsbourg has a genius idea: if he promised Brigitte Bardot not to broadcast the torrid duet Je t’aime moi non plus, which they recorded together, he is not prohibited from resuming it with another … “ He played the recording for me in his parents’ apartment after we met. When he asked me if I wanted to sing it, I only agreed out of jealousy: I didn’t want him to do it with another girl,” Jane Birkin told us in 2016. sees that Jane Birkin’s fragile timbre makes the song even more suggestive than BB’s deep voice. As soon as the disc was released, the scandal was huge! “‘The Pope was our best publicist,'” Jane recalled.
L’Osservatore Romano, official publication of the Vatican, had indeed called for a boycott of this song considered obscene, and obtained that its diffusion be prohibited in Italy. The couple became number one on the British charts and the song a worldwide hit. “’My mother thought it was a lovely melody, and my father defended me when the scandal took on enormous proportions. I already know what song will be played at my funeral! »
Within the emblematic couple of the 1970s, Jane Birkin will hold her rank. In song, she is at the service of her companion, who asks her to sing high, on the verge of breaking. In the cinema, away from her demiurge, she stands out as the muse of popular comedies directed by Claude Zidi (La mustard goes to my nose, La Course à l’échalote, with Pierre Richard), Roger Vadim (Don Juan 73, with Brigitte Bardot), Michel Audiard (How to succeed when you’re stupid and whiny) or Patrice Leconte (Circulate, there’s nothing to see!). She finds roles there that confine her to a reducing character of a lovely idiot.
Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot in Don Juan 1973
At the same time, she poses naked in magazines that are modestly said “for men”. On the set of La Piscine, in which she plays the role of the daughter of the character played by Maurice Ronet, Serge Gainsbourg does not let her go, convinced that she can succumb to the devastating beauty of Alain Delon.
Galvanized by her creativity, she is part of all the projects undertaken by Gainsbourg, with an omnipresence in the media. She also accompanies him on his nocturnal outings, arranging her life around this monster thirsty for recognition. It was once “her” Serge, consecrated by the public success of the album Auxarmes et cætera, in 1979, that Jane grew weary. The exuberant becomes discreet, the muse leaves her Pygmalion but continues to inspire her, from a distance. New love, director Jacques Doillon takes her out of her inconsequential roles to give her a new gravity. Not content to be under the eye of the camera, Jane Birkin learns with him to go behind. “Being his assistant on two films was a very good school. It was there that I learned that you could shoot with six people, that cinema could be very artisanal and full of texts. »
The man, who will share his life for a decade, allows him to reinvent himself, while Serge Gainsbourg offers him his most heartbreaking songs (Fleeing happiness lest he run away, Les Dessous chics). Lucid, he made her sing, in 1987: “You had more than another / The best of me…”. But the one who will best reveal it in his moult is perhaps Patrice Chéreau. Moved by the filmmaker, she crossed paths with the man of the theater two years later. He offers her the role of the Countess in Marivaux’s The False Next. In this classic piece from the French repertoire, the little Englishwoman, who is now approaching her forties, draws the outlines of a more complex personality, with great virtuosity. At the end of the 1980s, Jane freed herself even more by deciding to sing for the first time on stage. “I wanted to be heard for Serge’s words and music. When I told him, he said, “Are you going to make an effort, anyway? Wearing lipstick, blowing up your hair.” When I made the decision to cut my hair, wear no makeup, and wear boy’s clothes! He was a little scared for me, scared that people wouldn’t follow me anymore…”
At 40, Jane Birkin imposes the androgynous allure that has become her trademark, and begins a passionate relationship with the stage. But it was really after Gainsbourg’s death in 1991 that she really took off, writing the play Oh! Sorry, you were sleeping… If she blackens a diary from her earliest youth – it will be published in two volumes between 2018 and 2019 – this is the first time that she has revealed her writing. In 1992, the play was adapted into a film. “If I dared to make this film, it was thanks to Jacques Doillon. He said to me, “Be brave, go all the way.” »
Her courage, Jane Birkin will have many opportunities to demonstrate it. Entire, she is committed to Amnesty International as a spokesperson. She actively campaigns for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, devoting a song to her in 2008. She does not hesitate to parade. She also embraces the causes of AIDS, Algeria, Tibet, is committed to the “Children of the Earth” with Yannick Noah. A true passionaria, generous and available. She also participated in three Enfoirés shows for the Restos du Coeur, in the second half of the 1990s. When we thought we knew everything about her, she surprised her world by publishing in 2008 an album of songs which she writes all the texts alone. An important turning point in a singing career almost entirely placed under the sign of her former mentor. “‘It’s daring to pretend to be worth something,’ she said modestly. “I was very spoiled with twenty years of songs by Serge, between Je t’aime moi non plus, and my album Amours des feintes, which he finished writing three months before he died. When he died, I didn’t know if I was essential to French song. »
After the death of her mentor, in 1991, she had first devoted an album of covers of pieces that Gainsbourg had written for others (Versions Jane, in 1996), before giving the show Arabesque, reading arabo-andalouse of repertoire of his blackmailer. A few years later, it was in symphonic readings that she would defend the Gainsbourg repertoire around the world. Deploying colossal energy, she affirmed a new, more serious personality, after the death of her eldest daughter Kate Barry, defenestrated at the age of 46 in 2013.
Recognized photographer, the young woman will sign several striking portraits of her mother. “Being seen by her has given wonderful things. She was so exact in the places she had chosen. She was a visionary,” she confided to us in 2014. The artist imposes a photo where we do not see her mother’s face on the cover of the album Rendez-vous, in 2004. A disc of duets that sees sharing the microphone with international stars like Caetano Veloso, Bryan Ferry or Paolo Conte, and the French Alain Chamfort, Miossec, Souchon and Daho. A few years earlier, the young fifties had returned to the studios by interpreting new titles, the first due to other songwriters than Serge Gainsbourg, from Manset to Zazie, via Mc Solaar. However, as a performer, Jane Birkin struggles to detach herself from the overwhelming presence of Serge Gainsbourg, whose shadow hovers more and more intensely over French music. After having worked so hard for the international recognition of Serge, Jane will witness, happy, the birth of a cult among the most fashionable musicians of the Anglo-Saxon scene, from Sonic Youth to Beck, with whom she sings L’Anamour. as a duo in 2000.
Winter Children will not be a great success but will allow Jane Birkin to envisage a future as an author. She wrote the script and directed Boxes, an autobiographical film in which she finds her friend Michel Piccoli. With him, and Hervé Pierre, from the Comédie-Française, she will present a reading of Serge’s texts at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, under the title Gainsbourg, poet major, in 2014.
Fallen under the spell of the lady’s writing, Étienne Daho, a friend of the family, encouraged her to sign new songs. “Étienne was a driving force, with his music and that of Jean-Louis Piérot. It’s been such an adventure,” she explained in 2020, proud of the record that marked her second foray into songwriting, Oh Pardon, you were sleeping! Jane Birkin did not disregard the tragedy that had struck her, the death of her eldest daughter, Kate, in particular on the very raw Cigarettes (“a song written in the distress of her absence”) or These thick walls, which talks about his visits to Kate’s grave. “ The cemetery is a fright from the reality of things, we lay the flowers quickly and we break. »
A thousand leagues from the eternal muse of Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin asserted herself as a strong and dignified woman with experience and authority. “Having worn Serge’s work, I could finally have the audacity to be myself. “Health problems will keep him away from the stage and his public appearances will be rarer. The last dates back to the Cesar ceremony in February 2023 for the documentary, Jane by Charlotte, directed by her daughter.
Whatever she has done, Jane Birkin will always have been likened to Serge Gainsbourg. Far from being offended, she had made up her mind a long time ago. “ I can’t sulk my time with Serge. If I was accepted abroad, it was thanks to the success of his song Je t’aime moi non plus. It allowed me to go and sing in Hong Kong and Jakarta, Vietnam, Buenos Aires, Russia… It’s very strange to have participated in such a historic record! Without him, I wouldn’t have done anything at all. »
