Death becomes her
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To look at her, you might not think Charlotte Gainsbourg is a provocateur. With her quiet-as-a-mouse voice, pallid skin and neatly brushed long brown hair, she seems as fragile as the china cup of green tea that sits in front of her. But then appearances can be deceptive, as audiences discovered in 2009 when Gainsbourg won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as a grief-stricken mother in Lars von Trier's Antichrist. 'I think of my father tonight,' she told the captive audience as she accepted the prize, 'who would have been, I think, both proud and shocked.'
Her father, of course, knows a thing or two about provocation. A legend in France, the late singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg is best known abroad for his 1969 hit Je t'aime moi non plus - a scandal at the time for the suggestive moans and groans on the track, which he crooned together with Charlotte's actress-mother, Jane Birkin. Age didn't improve him either - from drunkenly propositioning Whitney Houston on a TV chat show to directing the teenage Charlotte in a video for their song Lemon Zest (a pun on 'incest'), in which they were both scantily clad on a bed.
Like father, like daughter then. Gainsbourg's early roles were sprinkled with mischief - from seducing a priest in the Taviani brothers' Night Sun to committing arson and assault in 1991's Merci la Vie. Nothing, however, quite compares to Antichrist. Given the film's horrific scene of madness-induced genital self-mutilation, you can see why she felt her late father might have been shocked. Yet ask if she was thinking of him while doing it, and she visibly stiffens. 'I'm not living my life with only that relationship,' she retorts. 'I'm not doing films thinking about him all the time.'
Her father died of a heart attack in 1991, and Gainsbourg - who turns 40 in July - has long since emerged from his shadow. Partly it's come through becoming a parent with her partner, actor/director Yvan Attal, with whom she has two children - 13-year-old Ben and eight-year-old Alice. 'It has anchored me in real life,' she says of giving birth. 'Yes, I think I did change when my first child was born. I think they help me for everything.' Does she find it difficult to strike a balance between work and motherhood? 'It is very difficult,' she says, nodding. 'I think I'm a terrible mother but I'm doing my best.'
It's a theme that resonates strongly with her latest film, The Tree. Gainsbourg plays Dawn, a mother-of-four living in the Australian countryside. When her husband dies of a sudden heart attack, she crumbles, even believing his spirit has entered the giant fig tree that overshadows the house. 'I like the fact that she's not a perfect mother at all,' says Gainsbourg. 'To my mind he was the strong character of the family. And she was able to be original and to have her own way. When he dies, she can't cope with the responsibilities. That's how I approached it. And she has to slowly learn and discover her role.'
Adapted from Judy Pascoe's novel Our Father Who Art in the Tree, writer-director Julie Bertucelli originally spent a year waiting in the hope that Cate Blanchett would take the role. When that didn't work out, she turned to Gainsbourg, whom she initially felt was too young to play Dawn. 'She's very sensitive, very instinctive and not at all a star,' says Bertucelli of her actress. 'She has a weakness and a melancholy but also a strength that was perfect for the role.' Did they get on? 'We became friends, but she was hard to get to know. She's very quiet. I like that,' the director says.
Born in London but raised in Paris, Gainsbourg has always lived in cities - so spending three months in rural Queensland must have been daunting enough. But working on another film about death - albeit one that's very different to Antichrist - it's little wonder Gainsbourg was so insular. It's been a subject that's preoccupied her since the summer of 2007, when she suffered a minor water-skiing accident. A few months afterwards, she endured 'a seven-day headache' and went to her doctor in Paris for a check-up. There, she discovered her brain had been pushed to one side as her head had begun to fill with blood. By rights, she should've either been dead or paralysed.
While the emergency surgery - which consisted of drilling a hole in her head - was a total success, it left Gainsbourg understandably shaken. 'The weird thing is, since I've had my accident, I've done Antichrist, which was about death, I've done The Tree, which was about death, and I've done an album [2009's IRM, the third of her career] which talks a lot about death and memories,' she says. 'So of course it must've done something. But at the same time, I haven't written those scripts. They came and looked for me. Of course, I was attracted once I read it. But it was a coincidence.'
Still, it seems eerie that her work should take such a morbid turn. So how does she feel about death now? 'I like thinking about death,' she says. 'I'm scared ... but I imagine it's part of everybody's preoccupations. It's a powerful subject.'
I ask whether Gainsbourg's new film - a reunion with von Trier - has to do with the subject. 'Vaguely,' she teases. Given it's called Melancholia, and deals with two sisters (her and Kirsten Dunst) who find their relationship tested when a nearby planet threatens to collide with the earth, you can bet it does.
Gainsbourg reveals her real reason for taking it on was a second chance to work with von Trier. 'The experience of the work, being directed by him, was so special on Antichrist. Really, I had never experienced something like that before.' Doubtless it will be another controversial water-cooler moment in her career. As French director Bertrand Blier once said, 'You ignore Charlotte Gainsbourg at your peril. Because one day she's going to explode in all our faces.'
The Tree opens on Thursday
