Je t’aime… moi non plus
I found a great article on Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg on The Observer Review. Excerpts:
It’s 39 years since Jane Birkin fell in love with Serge Gainsbourg, 27 years since they split up, and 16 years since Gainsbourg died, but you’d never guess. Paris has never let its most iconic couple separate - you can, Birkin says, still not get through a day in this city without hearing the immortal intimacies of ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ from somewhere - and anyway Birkin herself, at 60, has chosen to be living proof that love can survive divorce and death.
. . .
To Parisians, Gainsbourg was a kind of native hybrid of Woody Allen and Bob Dylan; when he died, Paris came to a halt. President Mitterand called him ‘our Baudelaire’. Like many homegrown French cultural heroes, however, Gainsbourg never really made it as an export. Another reason the French loved Birkin was, you suspect, that she was the first foreigner not only to get the point of Gainsbourg, but to fall in love with him. In 1968, when she was 21 and Gainsbourg 40, she had the nerve to take Brigitte Bardot’s place in his life and his bed. (Gainsbourg explained to her that he was afraid of Bardot’s breasts.)
. . .
She talks about their first night out together as if she has just returned home from it: ‘Serge sweetly doesn’t know how to dance but we go to Regine’s, then to a Russian club, and Serge pushes 100-franc notes into the musicians’ violins so they will play the “Valse triste” of Sibelius as we get into a taxi; after that we went to an amazing place where Mexican singers Serge knew were playing with Joe Turner, the great jazz man; from there to Madame Arthur, a transvestite club, where Serge’s father played the piano before the war. These gentlemen dressed up as ladies, who I had never seen the like of, come and sit on Serge’s knee; after that, at dawn, we went to have a croissant on the Pigalle and all the prostitutes said hello to Serge. I just thought, “Wow.” He had the keys to the city, or to all of the cities of Paris.’
. . .
‘One time we were in a bar and Serge had turned my basket, my famous basket, upside down and gone through the contents to the amusement of everybody because there were some very sordid things in the bottom. I was vowing vengeance and there was a custard pie on the table and before I could think twice my fingers were under the pie and the pie had been launched at Serge.’ She laughs. ‘He walked out, and with pieces of pie falling off him he walked down Boulevard St Germain. At this point I thought desperate measures were needed, so I dashed in front of him, ran down some steps to the Seine, and I threw myself into the river. There was a kind of whirlpool, which made it tricky.’
What happened next?
‘Well for one thing my top, which was St Laurent, hand made, shrunk to nothing and Serge of course was absolutely delighted. Anyhow, I clambered out and we gaily walked home arm in arm.’ She pauses, thinks of strolling down the river bank, soaking wet. ‘Serge was, you might say, a fan of the grand gesture.’
(via 3 quarks daily)
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