Together with the UK’s “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll” about Ian Dury, comes a film from the other side of the channel about the genuinely ahead-of-his-time pop maestro Serge Gainsbourg — together with Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf one of the very few French musicians to influence American and British performers. Best known outside France for a scandalous bit of pre-Prince porn-pop called “Je t’aime… moi non plus,” Gainsbourg was easily one of the most distinctive musical minds of an era full of distinctive musical minds, the late sixties and early seventies.
Here’s the trailer. Two provisos: To get the English subtitles, you might have to click the “CC” box in the lower right hand corner. Also, it’s a bit NSFW in a distinctly French way. In other words, for God’s sake don’t look at this if the sight of tastefully unclothed European beauties upsets you.
And, as a bonus, here’s a video for my favorite Gainsbourg piece influenced, naturally, by a great American movie featuring none other than his most famed collaborator and a legitimate one-time superstar, Ms. Brigitte Bardot.
