We might as well warn you right away, nothing is happening in the documentary by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ange Leccia, in theaters today. The two contemporary video artists followed the singer Christophe during a tour, in March 2002, then in 2007 and in 2009, and film, without narrative or chronological thread, his return to the stage after twenty-five years of absence: the rehearsals, behind the scenes, the creative process in his apartment…
The camera is still a little sideways, as if a little mouse had slipped into the daily life of the seventy-year-old singer who died in 2020, expressing extremely precise desires to the technicians, telling, with his fast flow, a few pieces of his life and singing, above all, in front of an amazed audience, his “Blue Words”.
“And I screamed/I’ll ??tell you the blue words/Aline/Señorita hurry up/I’m building puppets with string and paper…” Words, dropped from a broken record, that were the soundtrack millions of kisses exchanged to slow dances from another era. Foreshadowing Intime, a live album released in 2013, these versions are stripped down, revealing their genius in their simplicity.
His intimate concerts attracted, like moths sticking to a light bulb, an audience of devotees, trendy, proles, young, old, addicted to his thread of fragile voices miraculously escaping behind a piano.
We hunkered down to listen to him better, we were silent, religiously, a few phones went up, trying to catch the face under his blond hair which always ended up appearing overexposed.
Christophe…definitely is not a documentary about his life or work, but the capture of a petite figure – ah, he hated his size! –, dry, muscular and bathed in light. The image is spectral, full of grain, sometimes in slow pause. A synaesthetic portrait that would fit in a museum – more so than a movie theatre? – but which reveals the quirks of this handsome dandy.
There are some tasty scenes: the one where the son of a seamstress cuts his T-shirts sitting on the floor of the bathroom of his Parisian apartment or the one where he perfects, for long minutes, the bulge of his mane…
Christophe, whose real name is Daniel Bevilacqua, chose this pseudonym in reference to a medal of Saint Christopher that he had hung around his neck. In Juvisy-sur-Orge, Daniel stopped school in third grade and created his first group at 16: Danny Baby and the Hooligans, where he sings “in yogurt”, with invented syllables.
Two years later, he released “Reviens Sophie”, his first 45, which flopped. It was during a lunch at her grandmother’s in 1964 that something happened that would change her life.
Between twelve and quarter past twelve, Daniel composes a song, which he describes as “a moment of rest and silence, accompanied by a few guitar chords”. “Aline” was released in 1965. It was one of the first French “summer hits”. Christophe becomes a star and Daniel will not return. He just turned 20.
Christophe has become a cult singer. An always chic party animal, a mustachioed lover, who surprises with the timelessness of his hits: “Les Marionnettes”, “La Dolce Vita”, “Crazy Success”, “Tangerine”…
Jean-Michel Jarre wrote him “Les Mots bleus” and “Les Paradis perdus”, then, more recently “Les Vestiges du chaos”. He composed “Boule de pinball” for Corynne Charby. He has always rolled on both mainstream and elitist sides, obsessed with music in the broad sense, of rare erudition.
Addict. To drugs, to speed, to women, to melodies. Christophe tweaked the machines that fill his apartment on Boulevard Montparnasse. “As I get older, I want to touch them all,” he whispered to Point, sitting in a chair amid the jukeboxes, mixers and guitars that invade his living room.
A sound sculptor, he polished his keyboards, created bits of song all the time, collaborations recorded during a night visit. Because he only woke up once the last ray of the sun had hidden. The soul of the singer with blue glasses floats before our eyes for eighty-four minutes. And you want to scream, scream, “Christopher!” to get him to come back.
*“Christophe… definitely”, by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ange Leccia, currently in theaters.
