Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Directed by Joann Sfar

(Not rated)

**

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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.”