Kritiken

Charlotte Gainsbourg mixes new footage, photographs and interviews to create a portrait of her mother, Jane Birkin, that is light on biographical detail but heavy on emotional connections. Those looking for a biopic, or facts and figures, should search the internet.

It’s a daughter's access to her mother, and their time together, but ironic that something made with such emotion can feel so cold.

Ultimately, for all the images made in “Jane by Charlotte,” the film is less about capturing the image of Jane at 75 than it is about making manifest the unbreakable bond between mother and daughter.

Beautifully captured if a bit void of universality (few will personally relate to the plight of growing up with famous parents), Jane by Charlotte is a daring effort when it comes to healthily reconstructing relationships, always prioritizing love and understanding in lieu of bitterness and resentment.

Gainsbourg’s purpose in filming “Jane by Charlotte” may have been to look at and truly see her mother in a new way, and no doubt she succeeded. But as they bond and converse, their conversations take on a closed aspect, never inviting us in to their increasingly close relationship.

Those devoted to the Gainsbourg-Birkin universe may delight in the miscellanea presented here, but Gainsbourg has no interest in rendering her mother’s life, or their relationship, accessible or particularly fascinating to the uninitiated. This makes for an occasionally trivial experience, but one senses Gainsbourg doesn’t care — she might have made the film for no one but herself.

In the end, Jane by Charlotte feels primarily tailored to portray Gainsbourg as a caring daughter who has finally made an effort to understand her mother’s fears, desires, and life. And in the process, it leaves Birkin at arm’s length from us.

While it’s a great keepsake and character study for the daughter of her mother, Jane By Charlotte might have benefited from a slightly stronger spine of a timeline, whether that’s living through the pandemic... or tracing the incredible accomplishments of Birkin in her life and career and more directly reckoning with the way they will forever be intertwined with Serge’s.

Charlotte Gainsburg’s directorial debut Jane by Charlotte, focusing on her mother Jane Birkin is a unique, completely organic viewing experience that defies every single genre convention and trope when it comes to the portrait/biographic documentary filmmaking.

The closer and more personal this documentary gets, the more it opens up to the largest of issues... We get to see many family photos and a lot of Jane Birkin’s beautiful, endlessly fascinating face.

[W]hile “Jane par Charlotte” does little to provide an overview of Birkin’s life, it in many ways provides deeper insight than any biopic could have every possibly achieved.

“Jane by Charlotte” is a sensitive, pretty, reflective and artful piece that attains intriguing levels of intimacy and emotion alongside moments of banality.