Don Lope de Aguirre wrote:Any thoughts on Gainsbourg's 'Je t'aime pas non plus'?
It sounds rather risqué
It's nearly a masterpiece. Gainsbourg was a first-rate filmmaker. The only feature of his I haven't seen is 'Stan the Flasher,' his final one, although it is available on disc in France, in what kind of quality I'm not sure. A double-disc double-feature also exists (in a terribly designed package) which contains (without subtitles) his second and third films, 'Equateur' and 'Charlotte for ever.' As good as 'Je t'aime moi non plus' and 'Equateur' are, 'Charlotte' is *the one*.
From a 2001 interview with Godard in Libération, around the release of 'Eloge de l'amour,' conducted by Michèle Halberstadt:
==
Michèle Halberstadt: I've always seen a parallel between you and Serge
Gainsbourg.
Jean-Luc Godard: Thank you. I'm very fond of 'Charlotte for ever.' I was thinking of the duality between the work and the person.
Michèle Halberstadt: We admired the musician but had trouble with the public persona. With you it's the opposite. We respect the man more than we look at the work.
Jean-Luc Godard: The paths have moved apart. I've remained a memorialist of this profession in all its qualities. I've always liked every aspect of cinema. This world of film, which is the world in miniature. Films come into being at a certain moment, they bloom, they live, grow old, die, all within a brief period of time.
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Small piece I wrote about the film earlier in the year:
The third of Gainsbourg's four features sees the auteur continue his application of a workhorse rigor to all aspects of mise-en-scène. Torqued camera movements anticipate post-
Damnation Béla Tarr in their ability to Rubik'ize three-dimensional space, while careful lighting (achieved by way of Willy Kurant) assists in consideration of the seven- or eight-room set — a stand-in for
chez Serge — as a shadow-zone of personal tragedy and lapse in self-belief. With regard to the scenario: here I have only the vaguest understanding (no subtitles; my middling ear for spoken French). I know that Serge appears in the role of a quasi-alter-ego named "Stan" (SG's final feature is
Stan the Flasher), a successful artist, a widower, a semi-functioning alcoholic; and that Serge's daughter Charlotte plays Stan's own early-teen giddy
fille, flanked by cocktease schoolmates of the genus Hughes-Deutch. Stan and Charlotte share a rapport induced by deep mutual affection, a sense of the tragic, and an undertone of incest; Stan carries out (real or imagined) flings with one of Charlotte's friends; Charlotte beats her rival nearly to death on the Hoover'd parlor floor. So those details are clear, fine — but why Serge's performance here never became the stuff of canons remains rather murky to me. Suffice it to say that in
Charlotte for ever, Gainsbourg-
par-Gainsbourg is on par with the best of Montgomery Clift. (Probably not a good thing for some of the
ciné-vieux, but a great thing for me, who admires
Terminal Station above all other De Sicas. Although I suppose Clift is the Method-ist that MacMahonists allow themselves to like...) "Stan" is a role Pacino would have spent six months "crafting," but it's a performance which Gainsbourg pulls straight from his gut. Literally so, too, since one of the picture's final sequences finds him in single-shot medium-close-up as he repeatedly plunges a leather-clad fist past the barrier of his own lips to gag up a gallon of very actual, glaucous, puke. It's an arresting scene which maybe climaxes Gainsbourg's cinematic investigations of (here's that word again) the barrier of the body or, more accurately, the body as barrier and
bûcher, pyre. Of course, he's plumbed this notion through the entire body of his work — recall the lines in "Premiers symptômes" off
L'Homme à tête de chou that go: "Then, dragging my sneakers, / I would lock myself up in the water-closets / And there throw up my alcohol and my loathing... / I'd emerge, staggering, / And the little children would laugh at my cauliflower ears — / I had acquired, bit by bit, the head of a boxer"
(my translation).
Like much of Godard in the '80s,
Charlotte for ever is a transgressive film in the noblest sense; like much of Godard in the '60s, there's even a questionnaire scene, in which Serge/Stan helps Charlotte out with some homework catechism by supplying a stream of (truly) improvised answers that makes her shake with laughter. But keep in mind: if Serge was Jean-Luc's only equal in the art of the riposte, he was also up there with Miéville in exalting the tearful reconciliation. I'm speaking of the glorious final scene, when the walls between real-life and movie-making definitively collapse from the force of Serge's sobs, and he unleashes his camera toward a closing gesture that would be worthy of Resnais. What a beautiful film!!!
craig.
Considering the extras in the French edition it's disappointing that the UK edition is 'bare'. Still, maybe some actions speak for themselves. :-k