Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2011)
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 78
Fresh: 57 | Rotten: 21
It might be thinly written and messily made, but Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is also appropriately glamorous and intense -- and powerfully led by a gripping performance from Erik Elmosnino.
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 10
It might be thinly written and messily made, but Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is also appropriately glamorous and intense -- and powerfully led by a gripping performance from Erik Elmosnino.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 16,310
Movie Info
Comic book artist Joann Sfar interprets the life of '60s pop star Serge Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino),1921-1991, beginning with his childhood years in Nazi-occupied Paris, through his early years as a painter and jazz musician (brushing shoulders with Boris Vian), to his life as a wildly popular singer-songwriter, notorious bon vivant, and lover of some of the world's most glamorous women. Gainsbourg's two-sided personality (narcissistic and self-loathing) and his over-the-top antics with Brigitte
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Cast
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Eric Elmosnino
Serge Gainsbourg -
Lucy Gordon
Jane Birkin -
Laetitia Casta
Brigitte Bardot -
Anna Mouglalis
Juliette Greco -
Doug Jones
La Gueule -
Mylène Jampanoï
Bambou -
Sara Forestier
France Gall -
Kacey Mottet Klein
Lucien Ginsburg -
Razvan Vasilescu
Joseph Ginsburg -
Dinara Droukarova
Olga Ginsburg -
Philippe Katerine
Boris Vian -
Deborah Grall
Elisabeth -
Yolande Moreau
Fréhel, Fréhel -
Ophélia Kolb
The Model -
Claude Chabrol
Gainsbourg's Record ... -
François Morel
Headmaster -
Philippe Duquesne
Lucky Sarcelles -
Angelo Debarre
Gypsy Guitarist -
Grégory Gadebois
Phyphy -
Alice Carel
Judith -
Le Quatuor
Les Frères Jacques,... -
Roger Mollien
France Gall's Father -
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-
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Eric Elmosino
Serge Gainsbourg
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All Critics (78) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (57) | Rotten (21) | DVD (4)
It's a comic-strip version of one man's life and times, but it's tres cool.
Top CriticWhile the movie's on a roll, it's zesty, engaging and frisky.
In short, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a charmer.
French pop star Serge Gainsbourg was as much iconoclast as icon, so it's fitting that this fanciful biopic is both affectionate and irreverent.
Alas, "Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life" loses steam and grows more perfunctory as it wears on.
It's the story of a genius with no moral sense and no interests beyond sensuality. The catchy, insinuating music can only carry you so far.
In conjoining Jewish heritage and classic French chanson, Gainsbourg celebrates the hybridity of contemporary French culture, while its combination of realist narrative and poetic animation make it both a touching biopic and an inspired musical.
I love it when a film surprises me, and "Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life" won me over in the very beginning and held me for the full 122 minutes because of its quirky passion and intelligence.
A cartoonist who created a graphic novel about Gainsbourg's life and who has now adapted it to the screen. The result is a film that's as playful as its subject matter although not nearly as provocative or complex.
Overall, the film makes a common mistake: it tells what happened to Gainsbourg, but not who he really was.
Very nearly as inventive and fascinating as it is frustrating.
Sfar, perhaps understandably, adores the legend of Serge Gainsbourg too much to make the whole nicotine-infused picture anything greater than what it is.
Whatever its faults, it's better than Nine.
Elmosnino gives a deft and moving performance as the insecure piano player who reinvents himself as Gainsbourg, pop poet and improbable ladies' man, impelled to break taboos not only out of anger, but also to affirm his own existence.
As a musical mischief maker who exuded endless existential ennui, Serge's complexity is just too ungainly for any one biopic - but G:AHL is great starter kit.
Gainsbourg is a noble attempt and interesting enough to keep you watching, but it's bound to disappoint fans of the singer's and possibly will confuse any newcomer to the story.
Audience Reviews for Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
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Movies Like Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
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- Serge Gainsbourg: [spoken to Jane] I'm trying to resist my desire to kiss you.
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- Serge Gainsbourg: [singing] We were in love. As long as the song lasted.
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- Serge Gainsbourg: No, it's pretty when you cry.
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Foreign Titles
- Gainsbourg - Der Mann, der die Frauen liebte (DE)
- Gainsbourg, vie heroique (UK)
