They walk close together, hold each other tightly, then Charlotte hugs her, hugs her with momentum.
A liberating and public scene that happened at the festival at the premiere of Jane by Charlotte but which is the tangible, real symbol of this film and makes all of us viewers feel a bit of a voyeur.
There is a daughter who hugs a mother but the first is called Charlotte Gainsbourg, the second is the myth Jane Birkin.
Actress, singer, here on her directorial debut, the Gainsbourg who accompanied Lars Von Trier to Cannes in the scandalous Antichrist in 2009 and then to Melancholia, even before just 19 years old the Taviani brothers with Il Sole also at night and on various other occasions, with Jane by Charlotte he puts his family on the streets, makes us join the Gainsbourg clan and closes a bit with the past. With her on the red carpet were also Ben (24), Alice (18) and Jo (10) who had a family reunion with a conciliatory flavor with Yvan Attal. Charlotte, the daughter of the provocative, transgressive French author Serge Gainsbourg, asks her mother to tell how those years were, those of a couple in the spotlight, discussed, very famous. "I've never slept a night without sleeping pills",tells Birkin today in a grandmother version that she cooks for her grandchildren, who are not in perfect health. Charlotte wants to know everything about her mother.
"This film - he says - is certainly a documentary but above all a long exciting adventure, almost a pretext to enjoy her and at the same time the end of something, like a full stop. The more I look at it, the more I love it", he confesses. A life, that of Serge's muse Jane, which since the time of Je t'aime ... moi non plus, has been a succession of tours, successes, addictions to drugs and alcohol. The chansonnier with the gitanes always on appears in an amateur film halfway through the film, as if he had been a ghost until then: he can be seen playing with little Charlotte.
Then the twist: mother Jane accompanies her daughter to visit Serge's apartment, 30 years after his death (March 2, 1991). Inside, dark and dust, a museum with musical instruments, books, records, lots of prizes, a kitchen with food even exploded after all this time, the bathroom where Jane recognizes and almost caresses her scents of the time. At one point Charlotte also frames Lemon Incest, the single that caused an incredible scandal: with her 12-year-old girl, singer together with her father. There is a "weight", strong experiences that have also marked the life of Charlotte at one point moved to New York for years. And then comes the pain "the one from which I never recovered", says the 74-year-old Birkin: for the tragic death of Kate, the daughter had by the composer John Barry,fall from the stairs of a building. Almost count to be closed, "now I feel calmer, more serene", says Charlotte who with the film almost seems to have lifted a weight.
(HANDLE).