Charlotte Gainsbourg: "I don't like to watch my movies, not even the old ones"

Descendant of the most famous lineage of Gallic pop, Charlotte Gainsbourg (London, 50 years old) rests on the sofa in a hotel suite where she has just presented

within the International Film Festival of Berlin.

Dressed in a leather jacket and tight jeans, her image contrasts with the

of the gala night: black Saint Laurent suit (she has been the image of the house since 2017),

lacing , white shirt and matching heels.

Being the daughter of the English actress and singer Jane Birkin and the musician and French official provocateur Serge Gainsbourg, the performer's photo should appear in dictionaries next to the word sophistication.

Directed by Mikhaël Hers,

is (another) return to the eighties in which she plays a newly separated mother struggling to support herself and her two children.

Charlotte Gainsbourg during the filming of 'L'Effrontée'.Getty Image

Charlotte Gainsbourg picking up the César for Best Newcomer in 1986 for 'L'Effrontée'.Getty Images

"We are always nostalgic about our youth and we intend to return to it," he explains in a fragile, almost whispering voice, which betrays his acknowledged insecurity.

“Both for the director and for me, that decade is the one of our adolescence, the one of our first times in crucial questions.

For me it has been very curious when the younger actors arrived on the

, with that eighties design, and saw certain devices like a cassette and said: 'But what is this?'

It was as if they came from another planet.”

It was in that decade when, at the age of 13, he got his first leading role in

(1985), by Claude Miller, at the same time that he made his musical debut with

(1985), a song written by his father and performed by both that it was quite a scandal.

Shortly after,

(1988) would arrive, directed by Agnès Varda, who was also not free from her fair share of controversy and who had a hard time finding her own distribution channel.

“Throughout my career I have made a few quite controversial films, although for me that was not a shoot.

She was working on the documentary about my mother,

, at the same time, and she was living in our house for a year.

I was very angry, because when I came back from school I found the whole team wandering around the rooms.

But I never got to see it in the cinema.”

Sorry?

“Yes, I have never seen

.

I don't like to watch my movies, not even the old ones.

I did see the documentary.

I love Agnès and I know she was very important to my mother.

But having her all day hanging around my house?

No thanks,” she jokes with brutal, almost unfiltered honesty.

Charlotte Gainsbourg in her mother's arms less than a month old and with her parents and stepsister Kate Barry.Getty Images

Charlotte Gainsbourg in the arms of her mother, Jane Birkin.Getty Image

That story narrated the affair of a divorced woman (Birkin) with a 14-year-old boy, a classmate of her daughter (Gainsbourg herself).

A very uncomfortable script written in four hands by Varda and Birkin, in a kind of feminine reverse of films like

(1983), by Éric Rohmer (who, by the way, has his little tribute in

).

"It was another time," Gainsbourg assumes.

"Also, I had already been through the whole

thing and I didn't get to experience that scandal either because I was studying at a boarding school and I was pretty sheltered."

It was some time later when he understood the dimension of all the cultural earthquakes in which he had participated.

“Today we couldn't do any of that.

Not because people have a new morality, because those movies and songs at the time were also a

.

Although I think they did not intend to be controversial, but moving ”.

A scene from the documentary 'Jane for Charlotte'

Since then, it hasn't gone bad for her.

This is evidenced by feature films such as

(2003) and

(2006,) or his long collaboration with Lars von Trier since

(2009), with which he won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, to

(2013).

In addition, in 2021 she made her debut as a director with

, a docudrama about the life of her mother.

And, to top it off, she can boast of a long musical career (her thing is pop with a tendency to the vaporous) that she has been leaving albums with a dropper:

(1986);

(2006), featuring Air and Jarvis Cocker;

(2009), with Beck at the controls;

(2011) and

(2017).

”Cinema is a liberation, something I am much more familiar with.

Even though I don't feel professional, I get less nervous."

With music it's another story.

“I am a bundle of nerves, I am insecure in all the steps of the production.

Now I start to write lyrics and I always have the same doubts: Will they be good?

Where am I going to get inspiration from?

I don't know how to judge what I'm doing.

Neither in acting, but I trust the director.

I would love to be able to listen to my songs, because I don't like my voice at all."

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