GAINSBOURG/GAINSBOURG, VIE HÉROÏQUE Directed by Joann Sfar. Starring Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta, Doug Jones 15A cert, Queen’s, Belfast; Cork Omniplex; Cineworld/IFI/Light House/Screen, Dublin, 130 min

OVER HERE, we’ll go only so far in sopping up the more French aspects of French culture.

We’ll drink their wine and we’ll eat their food. We’ll puzzle over Camus and luxuriate in Proust. Gallic pop music is, however, a much trickier business. Weighty figures such as Jacques Brel (yes, yes, Belgian) and Edith Piaf are waved through without a glance. Meanwhile, suspicious customs officers indefinitely detain less easily classifiable performers such as Johnny Hallyday and Serge Gainsbourg.

Flogging a film on Serge Gainsbourg to the Irish is akin to selling a George Formby biopic to the Spanish. Though he composed some interestingly tricksy music (notably the Histoire de Melody Nelsonalbum in 1971), Gainsbourg remains, for many of us, that hyperthyroid-eyed perv who mumbled shocking things to Jane Birkin.

Joann Sfar, director of this odd film, is certainly not afraid to experiment and innovate. To this point a comic artist, Sfar begins his story in Paris of the occupation. A Jewish kid in a Nazi city, the young Serge accumulates a series of fixations that follow him around throughout his life.

Utilising the talents of Doug Jones, a presence in many Guillermo del Toro films, Sfar goes perhaps too far in giving these neuroses physical form: a monstrous puppet of the singer and a gross caricature of a Jew are ever at Gainsbourg’s shoulder. The point is made early, and no subsequent reappearance of the entities adds anything to our understanding of the man or the artist.

In the film’s defence, Eric Elmosnino does decent work in the title role. Wallowing in heritage ambience – Gitanes, brown wood and dimpled tumblers – he gets across both the charm and the selfishness of the character.

The picture is, however, fatally complacent in its assumption that the viewer will already understand why Gainsbourg is regarded as a genius. Beginning as a painter, he goes on to write songs for François Hardy and Brigitte Bardot, before becoming a drink-sodden parody of the blasé bohemian. He breathes his way through Je t'aime . . .moi non plus and renders La Marseillaisein reggae. Each key incident zooms breathlessly by without allowing the viewer time to ponder the worth of the music or consider the changing nature of Gainsbourg's fame.

The end result is worthy and honest, but, for non-aficionados, at least, more than a little dull. You may love it. Me, not at all (or not so much).