Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.
Joann Sfar's directorial debut takes an audaciously surrealist approach to the biopic form, incorporating animated alter-egos and expressionist sequences that set it far apart from conventional musical biopics. The performances, particularly Eric Elmosnino's uncanny embodiment of Gainsbourg, are exceptional. The cinematography and production design brilliantly evoke postwar Paris with a painterly, graphic-novel aesthetic befitting Sfar's background. However, the film loses narrative coherence in its later sections, and the ending feels rushed and emotionally undercooked given the weight of Gainsbourg's final years.