AI must warn you right away, nothing is happening in the documentary by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ange Leccia, in theaters today. The two contemporary video artists followed the singer Christophe during a tour, in March 2002, then in 2007 and in 2009, and film, without narrative or chronological thread, his return to the stage after twenty-five years of absence: the rehearsals, behind the scenes, the creative process in his apartment…
The camera is always a little sideways, as if a little mouse had slipped into the daily life of the septuagenarian singer who died in 2020, expressing to the technicians extremely precise desires, telling, with his rapid flow, a few pieces of his life and singing, above all, in front of an amazed audience, his “Blue Words”.
“And I shouted/I’ll tell you the blue words/Aline/Señorita hurry up/I’m building puppets with string and paper…” Words, dropped from a broken record, which were the soundtrack millions of kisses exchanged to slow dances from another era. Foreshadowing Respondenta live album released in 2013, these versions are stripped down, revealing their genius in their simplicity.
The mannerisms of a handsome dandy
His intimate concerts attracted, like moths sticking to a light bulb, an audience of devotees, trendy, proles, young, old, addicted to his thread of fragile voices miraculously escaping behind a piano.
We stuck together the better to listen to him, we were silent, religiously, a few phones went up, trying to capture the face under his blond hair which always ended up appearing overexposed.
Christophe… definitely is not a documentary about his life or his work, but the capture of a small figure – ah, he hated his size! –, dry, muscular and bathed in light. The image is spectral, full of grain, sometimes in slow pause. A synaesthetic portrait that would have its place in a museum – more than in a cinema? – but which reveals the quirks of this handsome dandy.
There are some tasty scenes: the one where the son of a seamstress cuts his T-shirts sitting on the floor of the bathroom of his Parisian apartment or the one where he perfects, for long minutes, the bulge of his mane…
One of the first “summer hits”
Christophe, whose real name is Daniel Bevilacqua, chose this pseudonym in reference to a medal of Saint Christopher that he had hung around his neck. In Juvisy-sur-Orge, Daniel stopped school in third grade and created his first group at 16: Danny Baby and the Hooligans, where he sings “in yogurt”, with invented syllables.
READ ALSOChristophe recounts the genesis of his hit “Aline”
Two years later, he released “Reviens Sophie”, his first 45 rpm, which flopped. It was during a lunch at her grandmother’s in 1964 that something happened that would change her life.
Between noon and a quarter past twelve, Daniel composes a song, which he describes as “a moment of rest and silence, accompanied by a few guitar chords”. “Aline” was released in 1965. It is one of the first French “summer hits”. Christophe becomes a star and Daniel will not return. He just turned 20.
sound sculptor
Christopher has become a cult singer. An always classy party animal, a lover mustache, who surprises with the timelessness of his hits: “Les Marionnettes”, “La Dolce Vita”, “Succès fou”, “Tangerine”…
Jean-Michel Jarre wrote to him “Les Mots bleus” and “Les Paradis perdus”, then, more recently ” The Remains of Chaos”. He composed “Boule de pinball” for Corynne Charby. He’s always rolled on both mainstream and elitist sides, oobsessed with music in the broadest sense, with rare erudition.
Addict. To drugs, to speed, to women, to melodies. Christophe tweaked the machines that fill his apartment on Boulevard Montparnasse. “As I get older, I want to touch them all,” he whispered to the Pointsitting on a chair in the middle of the jukeboxes, mixers and guitars that invade his living room.
A sound sculptor, he polished his keyboards, created bits of song all the time, collaborations recorded during a nocturnal visit. Because he only woke up once the last ray of the sun had hidden. The soul of the singer with the blue glasses thus floats before our eyes for eighty-four minutes. And we want to shout, shout, “Christophe! to get him to come back.
*“Christophe… definitely”by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ange Leccia, currently in theaters.