It’s a love story that tells Jane by Charlotte, first production by Charlotte Gainbourg discovered last July at the Cannes Film Festival. This documentary on his mother, Jane Birkin, allows them to talk to each other from the heart in an overwhelming exchange of universal significance.
“I understood that we obviously loved each other but that we had never known how to say it,” explains Charlotte Gainsbourg in the press kit. There was a modesty between us that I wanted to explore, I needed a pretext to get closer to her. This film allows them to open up to each other without avoiding painful subjects such as Serge Gainsbourg or Kate Barry, Jane’s daughter and Charlotte’s half-sister, who tragically died in 2013.
Confidence and introspection
The spectator accompanies them in this introspection from which he never feels excluded. Three generations of women (including Jo, Charlotte’s youngest daughter) evolve in front of the camera revealing their cracks with as much modesty as dignity. The visit to the house in rue de Verneuil, the future Serge Gainsbourg museum, where the Gainsbourg / Birkin couple and their children lived, is one of the highlights of the film. It is not impossible to have your eyes a little wet during this passage or to hold your breath for fear of breaking the magic.
The best moments are when Jane lets herself go. She sometimes seems to forget the camera to confide in her daughter without making up her memories, the passing of time and the inevitable aging that she accepts more or less easily. To capture his moments of grace, the loving child turns into an excellent filmmaker. Charlotte Gainbourg also photographs her mother offering sumptuous shots revealing more love than words would. Beauty is one of the main ingredients of Jane by Charlotte. Let yourself be carried away by the softness that clouds the film does a lot of good.
Tender and subtle
It would be unfair to limit Jane by Charlotte to star confidences. What makes it so strong is that tenderness, subtle but real, emerges at every moment when each one confides her anxieties to the other, her fear of having failed, of not being up to the task in their filial and maternal relationships. You almost forget that these women are famous when they cook or exchange opinions on a refrigerator. Charlotte Gainsbourg makes touching a film of a family that is not ours.