Jane by Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2021) (Patreon)

Hovering in the distance of Gainsbourg's portrait of her mother Jane Birkin is an earlier film, Agnès Varda's 1988 experimental doc Jane B. par Agnès V. That film, which was a kind of companion film to Kung-Fu Master, involved both interviews and staged segments, playing off the fact that Birkin was not only a performer but a rather protean one. As you'd expect, Gainsbourg is less concerned with Birkin as a personality. In documenting her mother, Gainsbourg displays more tenderness than curiosity. How does Jane remember her life with Charlotte, her two siblings, and the infamous Serge? What kind of mother did Jane intend to be, and how does that history diverge from Charlotte's memories? And seeing how the film consistently makes room for Charlotte's own daughter Jo Attal, Jane by Charlotte is also a mother's own inquiry into her role as a daughter, and how it has informed her relationship with Jo.

Your mileage will probably vary with this film. As the above description may convey, there is a generational longing and self-definition at work here that is ultimately quite conventional. One's ability to overlook its adherence to well-worn personal essay tropes will most likely be contingent on how inherently interested one is in the Birkin / Gainsbourg clan. Where a less sensitive filmmaker might have reasonably pushed Birkin toward emotional exposure -- especially around the death of Charlotte's older sister, which clearly shattered Jane -- Charlotte is understandably reluctant to prod her mother into anguished recollections. Still, the fact that Charlotte brings a camera into Serge's Paris apartment, which has been sealed and virtually untouched since his death, makes this worth a look.