Didier Varrod

Provocative, misunderstood, unloved, cynical poet... Serge Gainsbourg as seen by the women in his life: Juliette Gréco, Vanessa Paradis, Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, Régine, France Gall, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bambou... An intimate portrait of the man who could not live without them.

Between the nostalgia of resurfacing roots and the desire to venture into song to experience a rebirth, Nicolas Maury reveals himself unguarded before Didier Varrod, with a deeply moving sincerity. Nicolas Maury released his first album, La porcelaine de Limoges, in January 2023—a new experience for this unique, demanding, and multifaceted actor. It is an opportunity to paint an intimate portrait of him through an extended interview on a train between Paris and Limoges. In this specific setting, which was also that of his first (silent) film role with Patrice Chéreau in Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, Nicolas discovers archives and hears from close acquaintances who speak about him. A documentary film, like a kind of initiation rite, it moves back and forth between memories of France and childhood, and his condition as a man and artist today, taking on a new identity through music.

Jane Birkin has forged a unique bond with France and the French. Between the small Englishwoman, muse of Gainsbourg, then of Doillon or Chéreau, and her adopted country, love at first sight was immediate and lasted for more than fifty years. This documentary goes back, through the prism of this unique bond, to the life and career of a peculiar artist in the French musical and cinematographic landscape. The intimate portrait of a freedom-loving woman.