Gainsbourg

The Observer“Highly enjoyable...” This enjoyable, handsomely designed, somewhat ragged film brings us close to Gainsbourg as a personality. But it won't help anyone to a high score on Mastermind with "The Life and Work of Serge Gainsbourg" as the specialist subject...

Radio Times“Joann Sfar paints a fanciful portrait...” The movie may be a little overambitious in its scope, but it's refreshingly free of those redemptive clichés that blight biopics of less controversial figures...

Little White Lies“Devotees will devour it...” Gainsbourg's internal dichotomy is represented by a giant, comical Jewish face that appears at key emotional moments, and later by a lizard-limbed ‘ghoul’ chattering temptation in his ear. This is a bold piece of metaphorical dramatisation...

The Independent“A half-admiring, half-satiric cine-portrait...” The film shows off a bit, ready to play the fool but reluctant to examine anything deeply: we never discover how, for instance, he managed to elude the Nazis. It's a brave variation on the biopic, but not a compelling one...

The Telegraph“A full-throttle celebration of the fantasy of reckless living...” The air is thick with cigarette smoke, and Parisian style saturates every frame. It doesn’t seek out the depths of Gainsbourg’s character, but – rather like its subject – dazzles with pizzazz and sly amusement...

Guardian“An appropriately spiky biopic...” Elmosnino gives a real star turn as Gainsbourg, making him and his music explicable, to some degree, for non-French audiences and making this unique, exotic figure live again...

Channel4 Film“Engaging and original...” If there were a theme park devoted to the man, it would probably look something this. Low on naturalism and high of fairytale flights of fancy, it's a refreshing change from conventional po-faced biopics...

Time Out film“It would be tough to make a dull film about him...” With chic animated interludes adding to the appeal, it’s clear there’s an element of visual brio not found in every musical biopic, as this self-styled ‘Vie Héroïque’ happily encompasses sundry winning female performances...

Empire“Shame about that second hour...” Eric Elmosnino miraculously nails Gainsbourg’s louche, lupine suavity and beguiling vulnerability, and scenes of the composer’s early life — a Felliniesque fairy tale where he’s tutored by vampiric puppet alter-ego, Gainsbarre — are truly p

Total Film “A gifted iconoclast brought low by his demons...” You don’t expect to see anti-Semitic puppets in a biopic of a Gallic chanteur, a surreal flourish which automatically lifts Joann Sfar’s imaginative take on Serge Gainsbourg above the ordinary...