Documentary? Portrait? Much better: an exact, unexpected kaleidoscope of Brigitte Fontaine, total artist (music, writing, art of living), over the years. Six decades of career punctuated by masterpieces (songs), successes (theater), historical inventions (with the very free-jazz Art Ensemble of Chicago), wonderful tales (books). She is said to be extravagant, crazy, crazy… Far too vague: Brigitte Fontaine is rebellious, funny, serious. Such that eternity itself will change it.
Born in Morlaix in 1939, daughter of teachers, happy childhood, she went to Paris to act. Showing herself to be a singer, novelist, poet, free. Eighty-four years including sixty-one career, ups and downs of which even the lows are high. It has become more than insolent, the kaleidoscope of such a living work that “is on TV”…
Brigitte Fontaine, awakening the living airs on France 5, Friday March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day. Pile-poil: we also say Brigitte Fontaine (singer, dancer, poet, terrible, funny, actress of her own life) “feminist”. Demonstrations of happy girls, May 68, but also, at the beginning, the funeral of a child in Brittany: period images punctuate the kaleidoscope at the right time. Same with the song quotes, always accurate. The editing of this film is a model of its genre.
“I’m not a feminist.”
Common thread: the long interview in purple dress, cigarette holder, crazy class, of Brigitte Fontaine, princess outfit and queen’s headdress. Witnesses to this wedding with the century: Rufus, Areski (her percussionist husband), Etienne Daho, Matthieu Chedid, Arthur H., and Jacques Higelin (1940-2018), the celestial companion of parallel delusions. Subliminal companion, Jean-Claude Vannier, the most unknown of the great orchestrators.
So, feminist? Her: “I’m not a feminist. » Always unexpected, always at the center, she cuts up the words to think about them better. “I’m nothing in “-ist.” » Long silence: “Yes, I am… an artist. » Everything about his life unfolds to the rhythm of words, songs and facial transmutations, accepted with glory.
Brilliant titles with perfect lettering. Superimposed in full screen, terrible reds, the minitexts underline, here the lyrics of the songs, there an episode of the struggles, they announce, undo, over the course of something which, strangely, reveals itself chronologically without its knowledge. One of the directors, Benoît Mouchart, is also the author of a biography (Brigitte Fontaine, Le Castor astral, 2020) as remarkable as fifty-two minutes of television.
Fifty-two minutes on TV are meant to be seen. Brigitte Fontaine, waking up the living does not pass, it remains. He remains in the lead. Holds on and persists. Fifty-two minutes is a format. The three authors (Benoît Mouchart, Yann Orhan and Aurélien Guégan) do not take offense. They take it as an interesting constraint and play with it with grace.
What is a free woman? She is not a liberated woman, she is a woman free from all eternity. A woman who started out free and is stubborn. Who persists with talent, genius, humor, wickedness, tenderness… Wake up the living? Fifty-two minutes of luxury with a diva at the edge of the night. Great art.
