Jane by Charlotte (2022)
Director: Charlotte Gainsbourg Run Time: 88 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2022
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin
Country: France
Language: French
About the film:
Premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. In her debut feature film, Charlotte Gainsbourg looks at her mother, the singer and actress Jane Birkin, in a way she never did. Consisting of several intimate conversations between parent and child, as well as footage of Birkin performing onstage, the result is a spare, loving window into the emotional lives of two women as they talk about subject matter that ranges from the delightful to the difficult: aging, dying, insomnia, celebrity, and their differing memories of their shared past, which includes Charlotte’s father and Jane’s husband, Serge Gainsbourg.
“A tender and quite illuminating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship seen both within, and far away from, the public sphere of celebrity.”
—Jonathan Romney for Screen International
About the filmmaker:
Charlotte Gainsbourg grew up on film sets and recording studios as both of her parents, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, were involved in the film and music industry. At the age of 13, she debuted in her first motion picture playing Catherine Deneuve’s daughter in Paroles et musique (1984). In 1986, she won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for her performance in Claude Miller’s An Impudent Girl. Since then, she has starred in some of the world’s most acclaimed films, including 21 Grams (2003), The Science of Sleep (2006), I’m Not There (2007), Melancholia (2011), and Antichrist (2009), for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.