It The Hottest Dynasty In French Cinema - Jane Birkin And Her Daughters

Interview, Oct, 2001 by Colin Farrell, Graham Fuller, Gena Rowlands

it THE HOTTEST DYNASTY IN FRENCH CINEMA Jane Birkin AND HER DAUGHTERS Lou Doillon AND Charlotte Gainsbourg

Talking to Jane Birkin Interview by Graham Fuller

GRAHAM FULLER: Do you think that growing up in the swinging '60s has helped you stay young in spirit?

JANE BIRKIN: I don't know why people keep banging on about the '60s. I was very conventional because I came from a conventional family and I didn't go off with different people--I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having. I just remember being married to [composer] John Barry and trying to be the best wife in the world. Newsweek magazine came over to London and did an interview with him and they wrote about John Barry and his E-type Jaguar and his E-type wife." I remember thinking, I'm not sure this is entirely a compliment--on the contrary. But that's exactly what I was. And when John went off to America with another girl, what should have been a disaster for me was, in fact, the thing that actually made me have to go and do something for the first time in my life, because I had my baby, Kate, to support. So I went to France.

GF: You weren't thought of as conventional when you recorded your heavy-breathing chart smash "Je T'aime ... Moi Non Plus" with Serge [Gainsbourg].

JB: Yes, I admit it seems strange to say it. I did it out of jealousy because I was so crazy about Serge I didn't want anyone else to be cooped up in a telephone booth singing it with him in my place. I didn't do it for any noble reasons.

GF: When did you start feeling satisfied with your acting?

JB: I suppose, to give him his credit, it was when Jacques Doillon [Birkin's former partner] directed me in La Fille Prodigue [The Prodigal Daughter, 1980]. For the first time I got good reviews from people who didn't think I was capable of being an actress. Before that I'd mostly been known for sexy, dangerous films like Blowup [1966] or Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus [I Love You, I Don't, 1975], which Serge directed, or as a sweet or funny person in French blockbusters like La Moutarde Me Mente Au Nez [The Mustard Goes Up My Nose, 1974].

GF: What did you feel when you did that scene in Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse [1991] in which the artist, who's your husband, paints his young model's bottom over his sketch of your hands?

JB: I said some lines there about how he had painted me when I was young because he was in love with me, but now that he has loved me he doesn't paint me anymore. When Rivette gave me those lines the night before I did them, I thought, God, it's just what's happening with Jacques [Doillon], because he was starting to use younger and younger women in his movies, whereas he'd started out working with me. So it was very poignant doing it. I remember crying in that scene, but it didn't strike me as being significant at the time because I didn't know that Jacques and I would part later on. I remember far more the fact that I didn't want to go to Cannes with the film because by that time both Serge and my father, the pillars of my life, had died, within three days of each other. My father died, in fact, trying to come and help me with Serge's funeral. After that I didn't want to leave my house anymore.

GF: How long did it take you to reconcile yourself to losing two people so close to you?

JB: It took a very long time because I didn't want to reconcile myself to it. What was a great help was going on a world tour to sing Serge's songs. Then I went off to make a TV film I'd written called Oh Pardon! Tu Dormais ... [Sorry, Were You Sleeping?, 1992], and I loved it because I was the director and I didn't have to be seen by anyone. It was when I turned down a project, because I thought I couldn't be funny anymore, that my mother booted me in the ass and said, "You have to get out of this. Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone." And good old ma, because I suddenly thought, Yes, I've got to live for something. So I made some more films and then, still not feeling completely right, I went off to Sarajevo in a tank, directly after I finished doing [Euripides'] Women of Troy [at the National Theatre in London in 1996]. I took copies of the play because I realized it could mean something to women who were living through a siege in this day and age. By meeting people there I realized I had nothing to complain about--they'd lost children crossing the road trying to find water. So I stopped thinking about my problems and would sit with women in underground places singing songs.

I'd asked my mother what she did in the last war when her flat had been blown up. She said the thing she remembered taking with her was a bottle of Shocking perfume by Schiaparelli. I said, "What? You took something frivolous?" And she said, "When there's nothing left, you stick to the superfluous." So when I went to Sarajevo I filled my rucksack with bras and knickers and chemises du nuit and lipstick and took them to a university which had been bombed. I pulled out all these frivolous things and gave them to the girls there. My mother was right: When you've got nothing left all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust, and that's what they did.