Jane Birkin, who has died in Paris at the age of 76, was among a small number of quintessential Englishwomen – Charlotte Rampling and Kristin Scott Thomas are others – who lent a significant slice of their persona to the French nation.
Birkin did more than that. In 1967 she was the joint-perpetrator of a cultural assault from across La Manche that would have caused even Napoleon to tip his bicorne hat.
Even now, Je t’aime ... Moi non plus, the breathy, lubricious single she released with then-partner Serge Gainsbourg, causes delicate souls to slump on to fainting couches.
Gainsbourg, a cigaretteing rogue who looked set on confirming England’s worst prejudices about its neighbours, argued the song addressed the futility of the lovemaking act. All anglophone audiences heard were French lyrics that seemed to have much to do with “coming” in the vicinity of “loins” – “Je vais et je viens, entre tes reins” – and a truly enormous amount of athletic panting.
The song was banned from radio play across Europe. Even in France, it was not played before 11pm. Yet it got to number one in the UK and – mother of God! – number two in Ireland on its way to immortality as a key text of the permissive age.
Je t’aime ... Moi non plus will be much played today, but Birkin will also be remembered as a cunning, charismatic actor, a fashion idol and notable philanthropist. She was born in a fashionable corner of central London in 1946. Her dad was an officer in the Royal Navy who had acted as a spy in the second World War.
Her mother was the successful actor Judy Campbell. Following private schooling, she had her first scrape with adjacency to fame when, still a teenager, she married the James Bond composer John Barry. They divorced in 1968 as she drifted towards small parts in now-legendary “swinging London” films such as Richard Lester’s The Knack ... and How to Get It and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up.
Birkin’s nude scene in the Antonioni film was still surprising enough to stir controversy. She then moved to France, where her English vowels proved a draw rather than a hindrance to casting. “Without my accent, I would have had a different career,” she said.
She met the volatile Gainsbourg in 1968 and they remained together – though never married – for 12 often-tumultuous years. Birkin brought her unconventional talent to a stream of her partner’s records, including the classic album Histoire de Melody Nelson.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, Birkin admitted that their life together was unconventional. “They had a bizarre upbringing,” she said of her children. “We’d come back often after a crazy night, at six in the morning when the children were waking up like birds from their nests. Then we went to bed. We’d pick them up from school at 4.30, we took them to the park, we had our dinner and then we went out.”
[ 2013 interview: Jane Birkin tells Trish Deseine about her lifeOpens in new window ]
Her filmography mixes French arthouse with flashy co-productions. She brought an angular charm to performances in the all-star Agatha Christie adaptations Death on the Nile (1978) and Evil Under the Sun (1982). Later, she appeared in the Merchant Ivory production of A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries and received a César nomination for Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse in 1991.
Confirmation of her legendary status came when, in 1983, the chief executive of Hermès encountered her spilling possessions from a basket when on a flight to London. A year later, he created the leather Birkin Bag in her honour. The hugely expensive item, in various colours and models, remains in production to this day. What other Englishwoman could find herself thus celebrated in French fashion iconography?
In 2001, she was awarded an OBE. The French put the Ordre National du Mérite her way. As time passed, though she remained a charismatic presence, her fame was marginally eclipsed by that of her daughter, the actor Charlotte Gainsbourg, winner of best actress at Cannes for Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.
[ Lars Von Trier: ‘I am disappointed only 100 people vomited’Opens in new window ]
Birkin died as symbol of a thrilling time in popular culture – that fizzy reckoning with the 1960s sexual revolution – and of the perennially complex relationship between the French and the British (the English in particular). The islanders love to be appalled at the continentals’ license. The French secretly admire the British sangfroid – even to the extent of naming fashion accessories after binational celebrities.
All of that can be summarised in the gasps that, after half a century, still follow Je t’aime ... Moi non plus around. “It wasn’t a rude song at all,” she said in 2004. “I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The English just didn’t understand it. I’m still not sure they know what it means.”
