We’ve already revealed to you plenty of images and a simple video teaser from Joann Sfar’s biopic, about musical French icon, “Serge Gainsbourg: Vie Héroïque” (“A Life Heroic”) and today we have a lot more including the first trailer for the film.
Granted, it’s a French-language trailer, but you don’t need to understand the language to figure out the tenor and tone of the biopic.
The cast of this was is pretty stellar. Eric Elmosnino plays Gainsbourg, Lucy Gordon (who committed suicide earlier this year, RIP) plays his famous chanteuse wife, Jane Birkin (the mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg), former French Supermodel Laetitia Casta stars as Brigitte Bardot, Anna Mouglalis (“Coco Chanel & Stravinsky“) is playing elegant chanson singer Juliette Gréco, actress Sara Forestier (“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer“) will play mousy, French yé-yé singer France Gall and French/Chinese actress Mylène Jampanoï will portray singer actress, Bambou, who was Gainsbourg’s muse and girlfriend near the end of his life (more casting information here).
However, the issue we have here is that this trailer makes the film look like a very traditional and conventional life-spanning biopic from childhood, to nascent fame, to destructive rock n’ roll lifestyle cliches through several paramours and eventually death (if you’re unfamiliar with Gainsbourg who is basically a French national treasure, we documented his life fairly deeply here). In fact it was once more described as, “more of a fantasy than a biopic,” but it really doesn’t look like anything but.
Director Joann Sfar is a comic-book artist and animator and there was talk of incorporating a lot of visual effects into the film, including leaning on the digital animators behind Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” for assistance, but there’s not a trace of anything like that in this trailer. Not that we necessarily desired self-conscious and obvious animation in the film, but we’d be lying if we said this trailer completely dazzled us.
Canadian musician Gonzales (perhaps best known for producing and co-writing many of Feist’s records) is playing the stand-in piano in the film for the lead actor Elmosnino, but Olivier Daviaud is credited with writing the score (there’s a music doc in french below where you can see Gonzales playing).
It doesn’t hit France until January 20, but friends of ours in Paris tell us critic screenings are soonish and will hopefully report back. Early reports had it scheduled for February 2010 in the U.S., but there’s still no word on that and we wouldn’t be surprised if it was pushed back much later. Just a note, it’s a tiny bit NSFW cause you’ll see a boob or too, but it’s mostly harmless unless you’re a total prude. At least the fantastic Gainsbourg track, “Initials BB” is utilized, that would have been a missed opportunity if they hadn’t leveraged such perfectly obvious cinematic song.
Serge Gainsbourg – “”Initials BB” (featuring Brigitte Bardot)
A making of the music clip in French
A making-of clip in French as well.
Some fantastical elements will be in the film, I'm sure… I mean, that's what the official website is saying and Doug Jones got cast for a reason… There (on the second double page) you can see a report in drawings of his first appearance on set, in costume : http://www.gainsbourg-lefilm.com/bd/making-of-12/index.html
I'm pretty sure his character hasn't been cut out of the movie (that would be a huge amount of wasted money)… And other fantastical characters, inspired by Gainsbourg's song are said to be in the film.
I just think that some people from the marketing team want to sell the film as more "usual" than it is, in order not to scare or disturb anybody. I also think it's silly 'cause it makes this film seems pretty dull… We'll see how the rest of the marketing will look.
I found this intriguing description of the preview footage shown at Cannes this year.
from: http://blog.spout.com/2009/05/16/serge-gainsbourg-the-sex-doll-cannes-diary-51609/
"So I arrived at the Star for the 9:45 screening of Kore-eda’s Air Doll twenty minutes early, not realizing that at 9:30, the lights would go down and I’d get a surprise glimpse at a 10-minute extended trailer for Gainsbourg, Je t’aime moi non plus (that, at least, was the title flashed at the end; IMDB calls it, Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque), written and directed by French graphic novelist Joann Sfar.
It took a few minutes to realize what it was we were looking at — I was one of many in the theater who got up and walked out, assuming I was in the wrong screening room, but when the Cannes employee at the door told me the Kore-eda film would show on that same screen at 9:45, I went back inside. From what I could piece together from the remaining 7 minutes, Gainsbourg is a magical-realist tour through the French pop icon’s erotic adventures. Eric Elmosnino plays Gainsbourg, and by all appearances is convincing at it; Bridget Bardot is played by Laetitia Casta, in short-shorts and thigh high boots when she’s wearing anything at all (which, the trailer would indicate, is not often); British actress Lucy Gordon is Jane Birkin, introduced as young and petulant and last glimpsed as a matronly shrew. There was a brief glimpse of an actress playing a teenaged Charlotte Gainsbourg, but I didn’t recognize her and she’s not listed on IMDB.
It certainly would not be beyond the realm of possibility if the producers had put all the sex in the film in the show reel, thereby offering a skewed sense of what the finished product will look like, but the overall tone of the trailer was classy Euro art softcore, with a touch of cartoon whimsy. There’s a recurring character with the head of a giant-nosed animal, who at one point seemed to be Gainsbourg’s sidekick, at another a servant, and at another Gainsbourg himself. It all seems very … cool."
Doug Jone's character is called 'La Gueule' or 'Nosferato' in the script.
Wow.
Definitely very excited.
New pictures of the French actress Laetitia Casta as Brigitte Bardot with Eric Elmosnino as Serge Gainsbourg from the Joann Sfar's movie Gainsbourg (heroic life) have been unveiled.