Directed by Joann Sfar
(Not rated)
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg was once “the personification of Frenchified 1960s cool,” said John Anderson in The Wall Street Journal. He also “blithely” rejected convention, so it’s fitting that this screen portrait does too. First-time director Joann Sfar, adapting his own graphic novel, has created “a mix of the surreal and sexy”—a movie in which touches of magic realism figure as prominently as Gainsbourg’s licentious cavortings with such beauties as Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Gréco, and Jane Birkin. The most overt fantastical element is a cartoonish puppet that keeps turning up in Gainsbourg’s life to encourage scandalous behavior, said Ian Buckwalter in NPR.org. These imaginative flourishes, as well as “a hugely charismatic performance” by Eric Elmosnino in the title role, make the first half of the film particularly promising. What’s disheartening is “the degree to which Sfar allows biopic obligations to smother his more whimsical instincts,” said Scott Tobias in the A.V. Club. By the end, he’s just another “VH1 casualty”—merely a new entry in the “one-size-fits-all formula for grandiose musical flameouts.”
-
Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
