'Gainsbourg': A haunted pop legend

It's fitting that French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg, whose life was a fantasia of happenstance, charm and musical incorrigibility, should be brought to the screen by a filmmaker like Joann Sfar, who was not previously a filmmaker at all. A celebrated comic-book artist, Sfar brings a playful/horrible graphic-novelist's approach to Gainsbourg, who probably would have appreciated it. He had no time for conformity, and defied it whenever possible. So does the movie.

Gainsbourg is an infuriating character, one possessing an epic instinct for self-destruction, but he also defeated his upbringing. Born in Paris and raised under the Nazi Occupation, he and his family were forced to wear the yellow star and despite his dangerously saucy attitude as a boy, young Serge was scarred by what he saw, including the vicious Jewish caricatures that decorated Paris. One of these -- which Sfar tuns into a monstrously large but generally benevolent marionette -- will follow Gainsbourg throughout his life, and provide a movable metaphor for his personal demons.

Those demons haunt Gainsbourg through his careers as a pianist, guitarist, fledgling songwriter and ultimately France's greatest pop music sensation. His romances were epic and his partners -- including Juliet Greco (Anna Mouglalis), Brigitte Bardot (Laetita Casta) and Jane Birkin (the late Lucy Gordon) with whom he sired actress Charlotte Gainsbourg -- were somewhat legendary themselves. His journey through this picaresque life is made by Sfar into a kaleidoscopic portrait of emotional turmoil and musical genius.

"Gainsbourg" will not be everyone's cup of Beaujolais -- Sfar is purposefully indulgent and extreme, tossing off magic-realist gestures with reckless abandon; his impressionistic hybrid is less conventional movie biopic than outrageous comic book. But it's also sexy and surreal. And when one considers how celebrity lives are usually rendered on film, Gainsbourg got the portrait he deserved.