The French May swept away the old order. The seventies rolled around and a new artistic and cultural order was emerging between Paris and London, where, if not? Jane Birkin, as an unexpected link between the two cities, then imposed the same model of woman on both sides of the Channel.
His presence – his photogenicity –, together with an indestructible personal, carefree and rebellious attitude, became one of the references of the time. With long, unkempt hair on her back, and a body with angular and restrained shapes rather than rounded and turgid, she became an icon of the moment. Birkin, in the seventies, was not alone. It had precedents: actresses Julie Christie and Charlotte Rampling, on the British side, announced something similar. Françoise Hardy, on the music side, and on the French side, represented almost the same thing.
It was the triumph of a new way of being a woman, carefree and natural, overflowing with youth. A style that inspired women to follow their line and, in this way, break out of the conventional norms of beauty. His charisma spoke of freedom beyond established roles. The spiky, even anorexic forms of a new feminine ideal. And the bar, of a new attitude in matters such as female desire.
Once separated from her first husband, composer John Barry (author of the James Bond theme), she left British cinema after participating in a film as emblematic of the change in Great Britain as The Knack (1965). It was the swinging sixties, when she took part in Antonioni’s Blow up (1966) in light clothing. The appearance in the film Strange Forms, more dreamlike than real, drew attention to her as an actress. And as a character.
Antonioni opened the doors of French cinema to him, and made him settle in Paris. La piscina (1969), by Jacques Deray, was shot there. A psychological thriller that talks about jealousy and distorted possession, where eroticism and low passions rule. With La piscina, with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, he approached the nouvelle vague for the first time. The musical success in the seventies made him gradually move away from the cinema after the failure, precisely, of the cinematographic version of the emblematic theme Je t’aime… moi non plus (Te amo… pero yo no) in 1976. Later, he participated in films such as Death on the Nile (1978), based on a novel by Agatha Christie; La miel (1979), directed by the Spaniard Pedro Masó (with a script by Rafael Azcona), and Mort sota el sol (1981), another adaptation by Agatha Christie.
In the mid-eighties, with Jane B. par Agnès V ., by Agnès Varda, Birkin found his place again in French cinema. The concern about aging is addressed, and the director of the nouvelle vague reminds him that forty is a beautiful age – all of them are – and an opportunity to take stock. With Varda, he would shoot, in the same year, the controversial Kung-fu master – later known as El pequeño amor – which talks about the relationship of a woman with a fourteen-year-old teenager.
The Jane Birkin of maturity is a serene woman, much more carnal than in her youth. She laughs unconditionally, as shown by Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter, in the documentary Jane por Charlotte (2021), where both are in an intimate sphere. Released from previous disagreements. Then the tenderness and, I say it, the unconquerable smile of the actress prevails.
