Je t'aime moi non plus (1976)
Notes on the title: This rarely
seen 1976 French film is based on a song of the same
name by Serge Gainsbourg. I have seen this title translated
as "Female: I love you. Male: Me neither." The print
I saw was a restored version partially dubbed in English
(more about that later) and had the title listed only
in English as "I Love You Nor Do I." I have also seen
the title translated as "I Love You I Don't."
Spoiler notes: Since many people
will never get to see this film, I am going to go
into detail about the plot.
Finding this film leads one to finding
out about Serge Gainsbourg. A prolific songwriter
and composer, the Frenchman's work is still used in
many newly released films to this day. He was a sensation
in his native France and even the song upon which
this film is based, which shares the title "Je T'aime
Moi Non Plus," caused an uproar for its celebration
of the female orgasm. That didn't stop it from becoming
wildly popular in its native land as well. Gainsbourg
also caused a sensation by creating a Reggae version
of the French National Anthem and by constantly bucking
the establishment. In his later years he supposedly
made several drunken appearances on French TV talk
shows in which he was argumentative and acted inappropriately.
Gainsbourg was in his 40's when
he was cast opposite young waif Jane Birkin who was
riding the wave of popularity then afforded to thin
young female ingenues like Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick
and the model Twiggy. Birkin was barely in her 20's,
but she and Gainsbourg became a couple and a cause
celebre in the art world in Europe. They recorded
a version of a song Gainsbourg had written and previously
recorded with Bridget Bardot called "Je T'Aime Moi
Non Plus" in 1971 which thrust them into the spotlight
of culture when it was banned by French radio, the
BBC and condemned as immoral by the Pope. A film seemed
like the next logical step, as Gainsbourg had already
been in numerous films as an actor and also doing
work as a composer. But it would be five years before
Gainsbourg and Birkin would get the film off the ground.
It's controversial themes would be so far ahead of
their times that even by today's standards, in 2005,
the film is quite shocking and unique.
Beautiful Joe Dallesandro, filmed
as if a sex God by Gainsbourg here (which he was),
plays Krass, a gay garbage man who lives with his
male lover Padovan, who also works with him. The two
share an idyllic yet violent love that is barely explored
on celluloid in the film (although they are seen to
be close and happy together, they never kiss nor hug).
We have to guess at their relationship based on what
is shown.
All hell breaks loose when Krass
meets "Johnny," a boyish girl who works in a roadside
diner. "Johnny" explains she has gotten her name because
she has "no tits and a nice ass." She does look boyish
and dresses in t-shirts and jeans. Krass begins a
flirtatious love affair with Johnny, but their sexual
dalliances are fraught with frustration when Krass
can only become aroused by Johnny's boyish ass. Johnny
accepts her plight in this love affair. But the pain
of anal sex is unbearable to her and her screaming
gets the couple kicked out of every hotel they visit
(an odd running gag in the film). Eventually they
make love in the out of doors, in the back of Krass'
garbage truck.
But Padovan has been exceedingly
jealous throughout Krass' flirtation with heterosexuality.
Somewhat unstable and certainly violent, Padovan eventually
becomes homicidal and, carrying a piece of plastic
throughout the film, he uses it to suffocate Johnny
while the young woman is in the bath. This shocking
violence towards a women is played out graphically
as the tiny and thin Birkin is dragged by the plastic
bag around her neck out of the tub and into the empty
diner, her frail and boyish body naked and wet.
Krass, however, is on the scene
and after Padovan offers the weak excuse that he was
"just trying to scare her," the dominant males rescues
the young woman. But things do not end as we would
expect and, after Johnny insists that Krass "do something"
violent to Padovan, the two males leave together.
Johnny stumbles outside, naked, as the two garbage
men drive off together in their dump truck. She falls
to the ground in a heap and the end credits begin.
The message of the film could be
construed two ways. In one interpretation, one could
suggest that Krass realizes that he must leave to
save Johnny, as Padovan jealousy will certainly eventually
be the end of her. Krass obviously has enough feeling
for Padovan that he cannot kill him to stop his homicidal
envy. But I think Gainsbourg is getting at something
even deeper about the male psyche. He is suggesting
that heterosexuality is almost impracticable. Boys
will be boys and boys will be violent. The violent
sexuality of men is something that females cannot
and should not be a part of.
In order to be in a heterosexual
relationship, Krass would have to purposefully and
consciously change his inner self drastically to be
with Johnny. He has already shown us and her that
he is completely incapable of doing this. She has
accepted him and changed herself to be with him but
in doing so has somewhat killed the thing that attracted
him to her in the first place. Krass, sensing that
she needs him, rejects her to be with Padovan, a safe
relationship where sex is kept separate from feelings.
With Johnny, Krass feels an obligation to protect
her and support her because it is "expected." This
is not love but duty. With Padovan, Krass makes the
choice to protect and support his mate. This is an
extension of his free will instead.
The psychological, sexual and societal
messages in "Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus" are immense.
But Gainsbourg apparently made the film thinking it
could play the lucrative American drive-in circuit
in 1976. Such a notion is almost comical considering
the subject matter and themes of the film. There is
much nudity and sexuality but the film was so radical
and shocking for its time that it is not surprising
in hindsight that it received little attention anywhere
in the world, even in somewhat liberal Europe. It
is exciting and wondrous now that the film can finally
be discovered and examined by art film lovers who
can appreciate the film for its place in cinematic
discussion as a glorious oddity.
Gainsbourg is a wonderful avant-garde
filmmaker even if he may not have known it while he
made the film. Some have suggested, and perhaps this
is even supported by things the filmmaker wrote and
said, that the film is supposedly set in the American
West of 1976. This is an amazing idea. The film is
nothing if not European.
First, we must discuss the language
and sound design. Gainsbourg's film is loud, rambunctious
and sonically annoying. His film's soundtrack is a
cacophony of plinkety piano music, loud engine noises,
fart noises and screaming characters. No one here
speaks English properly. Even Dallesandro, with his
trademark Brooklyn accent, sounds loud and out of
place. Birkin speaks English but with a French accent.
Other characters are obviously dubbed into English.
Padovan in particular is loud and his dubbed voice
seems far removed from what his lips are mouthing
on the screen. One assumes this film was shot using
both French and English since Dallesandro obviously
is using his own voice here. We assume Dallesandro's
voice was dubbed into French for the European version
while other characters were dubbed into English for
the American version. Perhaps Birkin, who was English
but one assumes knew French, did both versions of
her dialogue. It is odd, however, that her English
here seems noticeably marked with a French accent.
This all-over-the-map "sound" of the dialogue in the
film, underscored by the sounds of Engines and plinkety
piano music, gives the film an arty, yet decidedly
European feel. Mainly, however, it is annoying as
Gainsbourg seems to be pointing out the loud, rambunctious
and crass was of America. It is no accident that the
men are "garbage" men. This European film is an assault
on the cacophonous and wasteful lifestyle of Americans,
where even a women's body is simply "used" and then
discarded.
And while Gainsbourg may be evoking
the modern American West, his version is no more a
realistic version of America than John Waters' Mortville
in "Desperate Living," made the same year. Gainsbourg's
roadside diner is in a desolate area, nowhere near
a town nor a highway. There are never any customers
there. The signs on the windows are in English and
the place serves hamburgers and beer, but we later
learn that the proprietor, who farts incessantly,
uses horse meat to save money. This is in another
unintentionally humorous moment in the film when Dallesandro
and Birkin visit a roadside grocery store that looks
as American as a Mickey Mouse in a kimono. Here also,
Padovan jumps onto a shuttle bus that is so European
looking one can only assume the events here are taking
place on that continent.
But like Waters' Mortville, Gainsbourg's
locale is one of fantasy and other-worldliness. We
aren't in Kansas anymore; we aren't even close. With
it's desolation and isolation, the location of the
love affair we are witnessing becomes epic and important.
Nothing else is happening here. It's almost hard to
believe that there are even enough people around to
keep two garbagemen in business. This makes the film
almost Shakespearian and larger-than-life. We are
in a netherworld where homosexuality, although not
really accepted, is at least acknowledged. The rough
and tumble lads of the neighborhood are likely to
rough up the local fag couple but there is also an
undercurrent of homoeroticism in their violence -
mirroring the relationship between Padovan and Krass.
The continual message, as one might expect in a Western,
is: Boys play rough. But here the heroine, the love
interest, is not a "wife and mother" type as one usually
expects in a John Wayne Western, but a boyish waif.
Here the acceptability doesn't come
from wanting to "settle down" but rather from societal
expectation for one to engage in sexual norms. No
other women shown here are of the typical American
type. In fact, the only other women here are fat chicks
of the 70's variety who are treated as "objects" and
made to strip in a backyard party competition. Gainsbourg
is signaling the beginning of a new era in his film
where ample, bosomy women with child-bearing bodies
are being replaced by boys with vaginas, replicas
of the male with female genitalia. It is no understatement
to suggest that he is foreshadowing the future of
American heterosexuality. His message here, however,
remains, that these replicas are still no equals to
men.
This is similar to the role Viva
plays in Warhol's "Lonesome Cowboys." She is a bitch,
taunting the "males" in the film who ultimately gets
raped and discarded. She tries to be a man by challenging
and mocking them only to be allowed into their world
through violence and rape. These two women, Viva and
Birkin, both attempt to be accepted at the same levels
as males only to find themselves sexually repressed,
abused and discarded. In the homosexual world of Warhol
and (at least in this film) Gainsbourg, this dismissal
of women seems to be a "warning" more than anything
else. The moral of "Don't play with fire or you'll
get burned" seems to be re-envisioned for the 70's
as "Don't play with the boys, you'll get raped and
discarded." In both films, males "ride off into the
sunset" with other males.
Since it is a concerned with homosexuality
and homoeroticism, more than anything, Gainsbourg's
"Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus" is an ode to the ass, both
male and female. Since the sexuality and the eroticism
here is either completely homosexual or heterosexual
lust with waifish (i.e. boyish) girls, the ass is
the obvious object d'amour. If you were going to make
a film that celebrated the ass today, you would cast
J-Lo. In 1976, the "ass of the moment" belong to none
other than Dallesandro. His gorgeous male posterior
had been the star of several Warhol films, especially
"Trash," where the naked buttocks of his sleeping
frame visual confront the viewer for the first five
minutes of the film. Dallesandro was the obvious choice
to star in a film celebrating the joys of the ass.
This is mainly a film about butt sex and the lust
of anal sex in the days of gay liberation and the
cinematic freedom that America would experience in
the 70's. While we are near the time of "The Last
Tango in Paris" (itself somewhat obsessed with the
ass), we haven't truly achieved the ass-liberation
that has been unfading in the era of video porn and
the Internet. Gainsbourg wasn't just "of his time,"
he was ages ahead of his time.
And while the love of the ass has
been scatalogical at times, here that aspect is merely
hinted at. It is no accident that Krass and Padovan
load old toilets into their truck in one scene. Trash,
dumping ground, dead birds, and toilets are as much
of the visual landscape of this film as Joe's ass.
The toilet is the obvious setting for "ass love" and
Gainsbourg is not shy about suggesting this. The deflowering
of Johnny takes place on the bathroom floor, near
the toilet, as she pulls the shower curtain down in
a scene reminiscent of Janet Leigh's death in Hitchcock's
"Psycho." But where Leigh's Marian Crane is losing
her life in that film, Birkin's Johnny is only losing
her gender as Dallesandro penetrates her ass as she
tells him, "I am a boy." (One cannot even begin to
understand where Gainsbourg's psyche was at this time
as his petite wife suggested she was male while filming
a love scene in a movie in which he directed her).
"Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus" is an amazing
film. Just think of the most simple of synopsis: A
gay garbage man falls in love with a boyish girl and
discovers he can only have butt sex with her but her
screams of pain only frustrate their sexual unions.
Who wouldn't want to see that film?
It is, without a doubt, a modern classic that deserves
a place of high honor in the annals (he he) of cinematic
history.
Notes:
The version I saw was a remastered
print in English (often dubbed) however versions also
exist in French with English subtitles.
Also with Hugues Quester, Reinhard
Kolldehoff, and Gerard Depardieu as a young man obviously
in love with his horse. (Didn't even get to that part
of the film did I).
Script and score also by Gainsbourg.
Shot by Wally Kurant.
The film was released in France
and nominated for a couple of Cesar Awards for Sound
and Score.
Viewed at The Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
in August 2005 with my friend Johnny Oh! With Joe
Dallesandro in attendance. The presentation was promoted
as "Joe's favorite film in which he has appeared."
The event was also presented with assistance from
the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival
and The Austin Film Society.
Joe was introduced before the film
and, at 57, he is not the mirror of his former sex
symbol self. Flabby, tired, greasy and aged, Dallesandro
is still recognizable when he opens his mouth and
that trademark Brooklyn accent comes forth.
Dallesandro did a short Q&A after
the film and was funny and literate. People seemed
more interested in asking him questions about his
Warhol days then about the film presented which may
have caused the Q&A to run a little short. Dallesandro
did stay after the event and sign things for people.
I also ran into my friend and Austin
filmmaker Kyle Henry before the show and he is going
to send me a copy of his film "Room" which played
at Sundance and at Cannes this year.
