Charlotte Gainsbourg and her father’s house, start of a new story – Libération

2023-09-18 20:58:00

Editorial by Alexandra Schwartzbrod

With the opening of Maison Gainsbourg on Wednesday September 20, the singer’s daughter delicately marks the end of mourning, as she tells it in the premises of “Libération”.

She believed for a long time that her father was going to return. Retake possession of 5 bis, rue de Verneuil, once again leave its smell, its gypsy girls, its pairs of Repettos lingering there. And then, after more than thirty years of denial and a long flight to New York the day after the death of her sister Kate, Charlotte Gainsbourg finally let go. It was time to mourn her father and agree to share with the public this place where she grew up. And to which, by incredible coincidence, he had given her the keys… the day before his death.

The opening of Serge Gainsbourg’s house on Wednesday, September 20, was to mark the end of “unfinished mourning,” as she says, and yet life wanted her to experience the beginning of another mourning, that of Jane Birkin, who died in July, great love of Serge and mother of Charlotte who has kept her appearance and gestures. Yes, we call them by their first names, they are such a part of our daily lives that it is difficult to give them a proper name. We saw Charlotte as a baby in Jane’s arms on rue de Verneuil, as a pre-teen in Lemon Incest, the song that her father had composed for her with a taste for scandal, then as a teenager, a woman, a mother in her turn, and finally a daughter accompanying the last years of his mother by filming her up close.

So, when she arrived at the Libération offices on Monday to comment on her own “5 bis” photos, to use her words, we were hardly surprised. With her cap pulled on her head and her black tank top pulled over a pair of jeans, she didn’t stand out among the journalists. Neither a fashion plate nor a face of mourning, Charlotte Gainsbourg showed herself to be available, delicate, listening to our arguments on this or that photo and never opposing them, advancing her own with soft steps, voice like a breath, “on the surface”. “of skin” as she describes herself, and yet sure of herself, determined to make the opening of this incredible place the start of a new story.