Je t’aime, moi non plus [I Love You, I Don’t] *** (1975, Jane Birkin, Joe Dallesandro, Hugues Quester, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Gérard Depardieu) – Classic Movie Review 4,223

Jane Birkin stars in the controversial film Je t’aime moi non plus (1976) as the skinny waitress Johnny, who lives and works in a truck-stop, but longs for love. She falls head over heels for the gay garbage trucker Krassky (Joe Dallesandro).

Jane Birkin stars in the controversial film Je t’aime moi non plus (1976) as the skinny waitress Johnny, who lives and works in a truck-stop in the middle of nowhere, but longs for love. She falls head over heels for the gay garbage trucker Krassky (Joe Dallesandro), who arrives at her truck-stop café one day with his lover Padovan (Hugues Quester).

However, her sleazy boss Boris (Reinhard Kolldehoff) warns her Krassky is gay. But, charmed by her boyish looks and naïve and unconditional love, Krassky starts to like her too and they start a relationship. Both too busy making noisy love, neither notices the growing jealousy of Krassky’s boyfriend Padovan…

Writer-director-composer Serge Gainsbourg’s vintage 1976 sexed-up love triangle drama is a unique film, with uncensored eroticism and unpredictable and unforgettable sex scenes. Birkin and Dallesandro are both incredibly sexy and Gérard Depardieu has a surprise cameo role as a passing cynical gay local peasant on a horse.

The BBFC rejected it for UK cinemas in 1976 but it was finally passed uncut for video in 1993.

It the first film directed by Gainsbourg, developing what became his regular theme of passion to the death. Birkin was his partner at that time.

The song Je t’aime… moi non plus was written for and recorded with Gainsbourg’s then girlfriend, Brigitte Bardot, in winter 1967, but not released till 1986. In 1969, Gainsbourg recorded a version with Birkin. It reached number one in the UK, though it was banned from BBC radio, as it culminates in orgasm sounds. Gainsbourg asked her to sing an octave higher than Bardot ‘so you’ll sound like a little boy’.

It was recorded in an arrangement by Arthur Greenslade in a studio at Marble Arch, London. Birkin said she ‘got a bit carried away with the heavy breathing and I was told to calm down, so at one point I stopped breathing altogether. You can hear that little gap on the record.’

Jane Birkin died at her home in Paris on 16 July 2023, at the age of 76 after having a stroke in 2021. London-born Birkin began her career in minor roles in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), and in Kaleidoscope (1966). She appeared in the controversial film Je t’aime moi non plus (1976) under Serge Gainsbourg’s direction and found international acting fame with the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (1978), and Evil Under the Sun (1982), and is especially remembered for Daddy Nostalgie (1990).

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