"He was great, and I was just a cutie": The love story of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in photographs

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Recently, a photo exhibition of photographs of the French singer Serge Gainsbourg and the English actress Jane Birkin opened in England. Now Jane is 71 years old, on account of her almost 90 roles in films, 4 films directed by her, more than 10 music albums, but Jane admits that the peak of her career is still the song "Je t'aime … moi non plus," which she performed with Serge almost 50 years ago …

The couple met on the set of the film "Slogan," in which they were to record a joint song. Jane recalls that the first time they met at a party before shooting in a noisy bar, and then somehow smoothly moved to a transvestite bar, where Serge got so drunk that Jane had to take him to the hotel. In the room, the musician immediately passed out and later could not even remember almost anything from that evening.

Despite a completely unromantic first meeting, Serge and Jane began a relationship that lasted almost 13 years. At that time she was 22 years old, and Serge was 20 years older than her. It was a passionate relationship full of love and scandals. They had a daughter, Charlotte, but even a common child did not stop Jane in 1980, when she firmly decided to leave the musician, mainly because of his irrepressible alcoholism.

Serge Gainsbourg has repeatedly admitted in interviews that Jane was his main love in life. And nevertheless, the central part of the exhibition of photographs is now occupied not by a family portrait, but by a photo of Serge with his beloved dog. “This is what happens when you're in a relationship with a genius,” says 71-year-old Jane. "And it has always been that way: he was great, and I was just cute."

Serge and Jane recorded the song "Je t'aime … Moi Non Plus" ("I love you … I do not either") in 1968, and this, in principle, a simple melody with a minimum of text, but with an abundant amount of sighs and oohs, instantly attracted the attention of the public and critics. For explicit sexual innuendos in the song, she was immediately condemned by the Vatican, and in the UK, the song was banned from playing on all radio stations, not to mention television. Perhaps the best ad for the two celebrities would be hard to come up with.

“I remember how one day in Paris, even before the song was officially released, we were sitting in a restaurant. Serge asked the waiter to play the song in the hall. It was the summer of 1969, and neither Jane nor Serge had yet to be recognized on the streets,”recalls Andrew Birkin, Jane's brother. - And this song began to play in the hall. I remember watching the faces of the crowd in the restaurant when groans began to come from the turntable. We sat with a completely innocent look and continued to eat, but in fact, all our attention was focused on how the jaws of the visitors dropped one by one."

The current photo exhibition is organized by Jane's brother, Andrew Birkin. Then, during Jane and Serge's relationship, he almost constantly followed the couple with his camera. “I was in love with Serge, Andrew was in love with Serge, Serge was in love with Andrew - we were just the perfect trio,” says Jane. “I've never met anyone like Serge,” says Andrew in turn. - I just adored him. And I'm not talking about the sexual context, it's just some other level of friendship."

“Serge loved Jane a lot, and she loved him,” Andrew recalls. - For seven years they lived like in a fairy tale, and then Serge began to drink. He drank so much that it became very difficult to live with him. Actually, it didn't irritate me very much. I could at least beat him at chess when he was drunk."

Andrew continued to be friends with Serge even after the breakup between the singer and Jane, and he was the last person to see Gainsbourg alive before he died of a heart attack in 1991. “That day he met me at his home, took me into a completely dark room, where there was a whole bunch of some second-rate American films, put one of them on the player and after three minutes passed out. I left his house and never saw him alive again."

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