The love story between Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg

Jane Birkin was a singer, songwriter, actress, style icon and mother of three artists. Throughout her life she travelled, worked, suffered and loved, especially Serge Gainsbourg. The poet and "la petite Anglaise" were a couple for 12 years. Just over a decade that consisted of albums, songs with a high erotic content, a daughter (Charlotte Gainsbourg), passion, great public tirades, jealousy and a complicity that would never leave them, not even when their love story was over. Free, sensual and unconsciously cool, they inspire each other's creativity and go down in history as the most legendary couples of all time.

The first meeting 

When Jane sees Serge for the first time in 1968, she finds him arrogant and ugly. She has just arrived from England to shoot Slogan. She has been chosen by director Pierre Grimblat to replace Marisa Berenson, even though she does not speak a word of French. Which Gainsbourg does not like. On stage, the two have to pretend to be in love, but during the first week of filming, as soon as she finishes, she goes to the dressing room in tears, distraught about the strained relationship with her set partner. "He's terrible! He's supposed to play the role of my lover, but he's so arrogant and stuck-up, plus he completely ignores me," she says in a phone conversation with her brother about the one who would have been the great love of her life. Then suddenly everything changes. To calm things down between the two, Grimblat organises a dinner for the three of them so they can get to know each other better and break the ice. On a pretext, he leaves them alone and Jane and Serge end up slow dancing. The singer is awkward and steps on her toes. She senses tenderness. She realises that his rough and rude behaviour is just a pose to hide his shyness. In reality, he is kind, charming, a true gentleman. That same evening he takes her to a club, to the Rasputin, where he asks Russian musicians to play Sibelius' Valse triste, to the Calvados and then to a drag club where her father was a pianist. Around 4 of the clock Serge hails a taxi and asks her if she would like to be escorted to her quarters. She refuses and follows him to his hotel. As soon as they enter the room, Jane locks herself in the bathroom and considers succumbing to the man's charms, but when she comes out she finds him asleep. She goes out. When she returns, she leaves only a copy of the record they danced to that night (Yummy, yummy, yummy, I have Got Love in My Tummy!). She clamps it between her toes and leaves. That's how it all started.

"Je t'aime... moi non plus" 

"I did it out of jealousy. I remember Serge playing the version with Bardot, which he never released, to a crew from TV and there was a very beautiful girl in a kilt on the couch. When I saw how proud he was to play it for the reporters and the girl on the couch, I knew I had to be the one to sing it. Especially as other actresses stood around him, Mireille Darc asked, "So Sergeou, how about this little song?" So Jane tells how she came to sing the most scandalous song of all time, originally written for Brigitte Bardot, with whom Gainsbourg had a liaison lasting several months before returning to her husband, German billionaire Gunter Sachs. So, to prevent her partner from recording the song with another beauty, she finds herself in a huge studio in Marbella, winking into the microphone. On their return to Paris, the couple have dinner in the cellars of the Hôtel des Beaux-Arts. Serge gets up from the table and plays the song on the pick-up. Suddenly, all the couples stop talking. Serge pinches his partner and says, "I think we have a hit." That's right. Je t'aime... moi non plus (and by extension Serge and Jane) becomes a symbol of freedom around the world. The Pope bans it, as does the BBC, because they consider it scandalous and pornographic. But everyone secretly listens to it and proclaims its success and immortality.

Style, passion, controversy and an endless complicity

Twelve years of love. A story that is still talked about today. And why? Because together they are beautiful, cool, outrageous and unconventional. She has that mixture of Swinging London and effortless Parisian chic, he has the magnetism of the cursed poet. She gives him styling tips, he writes entire albums for her. From their first meeting on set in 1968 until Jane says she's had enough because she's tired of Serge's alcoholism, they live together (in the flat at 5 bis rue de Verneul in the 7th arrondissement). "We should not exaggerate, we were not the Kennedys! We were supposed to embody a form of freedom. Our 20-year age difference, our lifestyle - we went out at night, came home to wake Kate and Charlotte before school, and slept during the day - our own imagination, our lack of taboos... Serge used to say, 'We are not an immoral couple, we are an amoral couple'." Tells Birkin. Their love is unruly, a precarious balance of great passionate outbursts and fierce public tirades. The episode in the Castel bar in Paris is legendary. Jane is furious that Gainsbourg is rifling through her basket of her most secret possessions and throws a custard pie in his face before chasing him down the Boulevard St Germain. He, in turn, becomes enraged. To calm her anger and blow off steam, Jane jumps into the Seine in her Yves Saint Laurent top, resurfaces and happily returns home arm in arm with Gainsbourg. Their routine is a rollercoaster ride. Legend has it that they spend their nights dancing, but always return on time to wake their daughters and take them to school. Then they start their trips all over again. Day after day. Until the balance breaks. Jane cannot stand Serge and his alcoholism. They separate, but continue to work together. To love each other. Forever.