Jane by Charlotte

Charlotte Gainsbourg's 2022 debut as director is an attempt to look at her mother Jane Birkin through a camera. Gainsbourg uses the camera as a pretext for crossing the distance between mother and daughter: unable to ask the questions face to face, she films them. Birkin resists the situation at first, and that resistance is the most honest part of the film. The documentary's subject is not Birkin's career but how two women have failed to see each other. The section in which Serge Gainsbourg's Paris apartment is opened for the first time is its emotional peak; the rooms have been left as they were for years. Birkin's death in 2023 turned the record into a farewell. The film is loose and deliberately unshaped. Who it's for: viewers interested in family documentary, Jane Birkin and personal filmmaking. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a career summary, or who will find the personal, closed manner wearing.