Brought up on the songs and films of Juliette Greco and Brigitte Bardot, the French public is not surprised to see its young female stars mix their genres. But 2010 is producing an exceptional crop of performers who are happy to appear on a rock stage or in an art-house film. For Greco and Bardot, read Gainsbourg, Balibar and Paradis.
Vanessa Paradis, the actress who first made her name in 1987 with the Euro-pop hit Joe Le Taxi and who is perhaps best known beyond Europe for being Johnny Depp’s partner, regularly performs in Paris as a solo artist. This northern summer the 37-year-old Chanel model is also the star of the new romantic comedy Heartbreaker, already a box-office hit in France.
PHOTO: REUTERS
She will work with her famous partner on screen for the first time later this year when they make My American Lover, the story of Simone de Beauvoir’s love affair with the writer Nelson Algren. It is this, rather than getting up to sing live, that is worrying her. “I’m really nervous of acting in front of Johnny. I don’t know how capable I’ll be,” she has said.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, the couple who became emblematic of the swinging 60s, is also performing a summer of gigs for the first time and played last month at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush in London. Unlike Paradis, however, she admits to nervousness about singing live, but says it is part of the appeal. “You feel very naked. You have no protection. The excitement and the fear, it’s very strange but it does push you to do it.”
After winning a best actress award in Cannes last year for her role in Antichrist, the controversial Lars von Trier film, the 38-year-old has returned to the stage to build on the success of her 2009 album IRM, made with US musician Beck.
Fashions come and go, but there is always an international appetite for a French actress who sings. While few British stars easily switch from one form to the other, the French have made a specialty of the trick. The key is perhaps the intimate Gallic tradition of chanson singing, which has always viewed a song as just another way of telling a story. Jeanne Balibar, the 42-year-old daughter of Marxist philosopher Etienne Balibar, is one of the more established exponents. The Parisian began by acting in Arnaud Desplechin’s 1992 film The Sentinel, and went on to make a succession of well-received films over the last decade, before bringing out two albums. Balibar is also performing her show Tronomette, described as halfway between a concert and a play, in Paris this summer.
Back in the 1960s the advent of screen talents Juliette Greco and Brigitte Bardot introduced the concept of the French singer/actress to British culture. Greco, who acted in the 1957 film The Sun Also Rises alongside Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner, is still recording today, giving a concert last year at the age of 83. Bardot’s musical excursions under the direction of Gainsbourg’s father resulted in, among other tracks, the cult hit Bonnie and Clyde that followed the 1968 film.
It is hard to separate Serge Gainsbourg’s influence from this school of singing because his obsession with breathy female vocals and the subject of sex have become so central to it. One of the Svengali’s first hits, with the 16-year-old blond-haired singer France Gall, was Les Sucettes, a song, full of innuendo, about a young girl’s fondness for sucking lollipops.
Both Gainsbourg’s daughter and Paradis launched their respective careers as teenage temptresses, singing lyrics that belied their youth. At 13, Gainsbourg sang along to one of her father’s most provocative pop songs, Lemon Incest. “I don’t think I understood the provocation,” she has said.
Paradis’ Joe Le Taxi created a similar stir. She was 14 at the time, but quickly went on to prove her acting talent with an award-winning performance in Jean-Claude Brisseau’s film Noce Blanche.
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