She was 22 years old, with big pale eyes, heart-shaped lips and an androgynous body that exuded sensuality under a collection of tight T-shirts and flared jeans. He, already in his 40s, was still a bad boy and self-conscious about his physique, who tried to get over him in the traditional way: by sleeping with as many beautiful women as possible. A year after they met, in 1968, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg recorded a duet, Je t'aime... moi non plus , which turned the couple into the living embodiment of the most chic and sophisticated sexual freedom. The promise of a more playful and exciting life. Half a century after the scandal caused by the murmurs and moans of ecstasy whispered by the English actress and singer, I am afraid that a truck loaded with the joys that we left on the road while we went in search of great love have passed over us.
The sexual revolutions give for what they give, and the one of the sixties liberated an entire generation, but the majority were men. Birkin herself, who died last Sunday, confessed that she was delighted to be what she wanted to be: “Serge's object. There was no one more impressed by a man than me." Above all, she wanted to be loved. And in her diaries, recently published in Spain (Monstruo Bicéfalo Editorial), she describes herself as a woman who "suffered from mediocrity and lack of personality", always haunted by her insecurity and the ghost of other women (the face of Nastassja Kinski, the talent and courage of Fanny Ardant...) whom she admired more than herself.
"He was a great man, I was just pretty." Birkin threw himself into the Seine after a monumental row between the couple and finally abandoned Gainsbourg after twelve feverish years, endless nights of drinking and parties animated by the jealousy of both, unable to bear his wild mood swings due to the uncontrolled consumption of alcohol and lack of self-esteem. He dismissed her cruelly: "You're on your way down, I'm on my way up."
Despite the separation, Birkin never let go of his hand. Not even when thirty years after his death, in full Metoo, the singer Lio accused him of being "the French Weinstein." Of course he was not blessed and his relationships with women were complicated. He tricked a naive 18-year-old France Gall into singing a song, Les sucettes (The Lollipops), without warning her that it was about oral sex. He recorded a misleading duet with his daughter Charlotte (Lemon Incest). He called Les singer Rita Mitsouko a “slut” on a live show and, on another, he addressed Whitney Houston to say “I want to fuck you”... Birkin didn't have a bad word for him, but he didn't join the manifesto of French actresses claiming “their right to be bothered”. He did better: he freed himself from the insidious feeling of being a creation by writing and performing his own songs.
