Joann Sfar on Gainsbourg

Joann Sfar is certainly not a man who lacks ambition. For his directorial debut, the acclaimed French graphic novelist has chosen to tackle the life of Serge Gainsbourg, one of his country's most iconic cultural figures. As if that wasn't enough of a challenge, Sfar has eschewed the standard biopic format and has instead opted for a theatrical, surreal style that mirrors its subject's personality and art. From the early scene when a young Gainsbourg studies a Jewish caricature in a Nazi propaganda poster, which then comes to life and chases the boy down the street, you know this is going to be something very different. Sfar has been fascinated with the life of Serge Gainsbourg ever since he was a child and if he was going to bring this complex character to the screen, he was determined to do it his way.

"Gainsbourg was the only French guy with an attitude on French television," the lively and engaging Sfar recalls when asked what drew him to the artist. "Everything was so boring on French television when I was a kid and this guy, he was not shaved, he pretended to be dirty, he would say dirty words and almost harass women on stage, and yet he was so intelligent at the same moment. Then when you discover his work you find also the sadness and the kind of cliché of the French Don Juan, the Russian-Jewish spirit which is almost mad and desperate with love, and it's very appealing for a storyteller." Gainsbourg, played in the film by the astonishing Eric Elmosnino, undoubtedly lived a life that merits the cinematic treatment, but for the director this is simply a story about a man looking for love. "He always claimed to be a rebel, but the truth I guess is that he wanted to be loved." Sfar explains. "He would do any silly thing for people to take notice of him, even if it meant hating him, but he could not stand the idea of people not talking about him or forgetting about him."

Gainsbourg gives this unconventional life a suitably unconventional treatment, but Sfar is happy to admit that it was his naïveté, rather than a desire to be different, that led to this approach. "I don't know how to write a movie" the refreshingly candid director states, "I'm perfectly aware of the fact that I don't know how to structure a movie and I'm not quite proud of the structure of my movie. I worked with what I knew, like dialogue, image, colour, scenes, and I have to confess I'm proud of the actors, the image and the scenes, but maybe I'm not quite proud of the structure because I'm learning." With no cinema experience behind him, Sfar had to fall back on comic book techniques to help him get through the production. Instead of giving detailed instructions to his technical team, he would hand them precise drawings that expressed what he wanted to see on screen, and he relied on them to bring those drawings to life. "It's a very good way to talk to a technician because he can interpret the drawing and he does not feel he is your slave, because he has a lot of invention as well." Sfar says, "We made thousands of drawings through the movie, and they told me they were very happy to work this way."

Unsurprisingly, Gainsbourg's visual style is vivid and memorable. Sfar utilises a number of imaginative storytelling devices, such as the constant presence of Serge's devious id (a brilliantly creepy Doug Jones) and a number of deliberately artificial sets that recall the director's beloved MGM musicals. "I don't want my life to look like real life I want it to look like a movie, so there's a lot of light and a lot of colour," he says. "The other thing is that I don't like it when a movie has the camera moving on the shoulder and you pretend that what you say will be more true because the camera is moving like you are a journalist and not a storyteller. My whole point is that you can give true emotion through fake image. This is clearly not a realistic cinema but I hope people really cry and I hope they really laugh."

For Sfar, the process of making Gainsbourg has been a remarkable learning experience and while he is keen to return to the world of graphic novels, we certainly haven't seen the last of his work on the big screen. Next up for Sfar is an animated adaptation of his comic The Rabbi's Cat, for which he has created his own animation studio, and he says he would love to direct a musical or romantic comedy one day. Whatever the director chooses to do in the future, Gainsbourg has given him a strong foundation to build upon. "I had no idea it would be so complicated to mix songs, children, animals, puppets. I didn't know that the production would be so difficult." he says, "I'm very happy that I went through this movie, because afterwards everything will be easy for me. This might sound very pretentious but I would like to do intelligent entertainment. I don't feel I'm there yet, but I'm on my way." The only thing Sfar is slightly hesitant about is the critical community, and whether they'll be as appreciative of his subsequent films as they have been of Gainsbourg. "Maybe they were easy because it's a first movie," he says, before adding with a laugh, "They might shoot me for the second one!" As long as he continues to make films as distinctive and imaginative as Gainsbourg, Joann Sfar has nothing to worry about.