Psycho. #16

Signalement. Caspar. Salmon.

You have expressed your distaste for Jane Birkin's acting style in the past. This is a view that stands in opposition to the general critical consensus. What is it about her particular affect that you find off-putting and what do you make of her image as an it-girl and fashion icon?

I’m afraid I have to reject your premise, on two counts: one, I don’t think Jane Birkin really had an “acting style”, so to speak; and, two, I don’t think that my view stands in opposition to the general critical consensus. I don’t think there is a critical consensus on Jane Birkin’s acting, beyond a general agreement that, well, Jane Birkin was in films. Where you get closer to asking the right question about Birkin, is when you mention her affect and her image — these are the right terms, for a woman whose screen persona was so connected to her beauty and the idea of being a muse. It’s this balance between passivity and the greater degree of agency that she would finally come to attain, that is needed when thinking about Birkin. I can only offer you something like my own very subjective view of her, and try to provide a more objective overview of what she represents. 

My views of Birkin are formed by my upbringing, which is not wholly unlike hers — like her, I am a deeply middle-class English person whose character and essence were shaped by moving to France at a young age (six for me; twenty or so for her) and becoming interested in French cinema and culture. When I arrived in France, in the late 80s, Birkin’s place was already cemented, as a kind of ditzy-charming émigrée, a bashful ingénue who had not fully outgrown her earlier girlishness, an English rose who had accepted to be sullied by French cigarettes and sex, and stayed on after the party had died down. Not terribly long after I arrived, Serge Gainsbourg died, and Birkin took on the role, in some way, of a professional widow, à la Yoko Ono. Her image, her entire career, in my view, are indissociable from Gainsbourg; he brings up the question of her role as a muse, and indeed the wider question of muses in general.

What I’m trying to say is that Birkin is indissociable from her image. The image I received of her came mostly from television appearances, performing songs that had been written for her by Gainsbourg, in her breathy baby mode, usually with a threadbare white t-shirt falling lightly off her shoulder. There was something, I’m afraid, that was simply grating about Birkin — which I later understood came from her deep insecurity. She seemed to be quite simply a puppet — somebody who had been formed by the men in her life. Her weakness, her vulnerability seemed etched into her. In my school, Birkin was considered a sort of comical figure, not least because of her English accent and bad French: how on earth was it possible that she could still speak such bad French after living there for 25-30 years, for crying out loud? That brittle English accent, which the French found charming, seemed to me an affectation at the time, but on reflection I think it was another element of insecurity in her; she seemed completely uncertain at all times, and was open about her inexperience, about what she considered her lack of talent; she wore her mistakes of French syntax openly, as a kind of symbol of her fallibility.