Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon honor Jane Birkin in Paris with rare intimacy and facts that matter. Dates, places, and where to revisit her legacy today.
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon salute Jane Birkin
Paris paused on 24 July 2023. At Église Saint‑Roch, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon led the farewell to their mother, Jane Birkin, who died on 16 July 2023 at the age of 76. Family, artists and longtime collaborators gathered as the coffin arrived, crowds filled the street, and two daughters found the words no one wants to say, yet everyone needed to hear.
The moment carried a national weight. President Emmanuel Macron saluted Jane Birkin as a French icon the day she died. Days later came the service, sober and luminous, with Catherine Deneuve, Vanessa Paradis and Étienne Daho among those present in Paris. The message was clear from the start: this was not only a goodbye, it was the passing on of a cultural thread that Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon already hold tight.
Inside the homage, the timeline and the facts
The ceremony in Paris gave a frame to a life lived between two countries and several eras. Jane Birkin began as an English actress in the 1960s, appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow‑Up” in 1966, then crossed the Channel. In 1969, “Je t’aime… moi non plus”, recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom, a scandal and a new sound in the same breath.
Work never stopped. She starred in “Je t’aime moi non plus” in 1976, directed by Serge Gainsbourg, and later in “La Pirate” in 1984 with Jacques Doillon. She directed “Boxes” in 2007. On records, she kept renewing herself, from “Arabesque” in 2002 to “Fictions” in 2006 and “Enfants d’hiver” in 2008. Her final studio album, “Oh! Pardon tu dormais…”, arrived in 2020 with artistic direction by Étienne Daho. Health issues forced concert cancellations in 2021 and 2023, then came the announcement on 16 July 2023.
The Paris service on 24 July 2023 crystallized this path. Charlotte Gainsbourg spoke as a daughter and as an artist who has been shaping memory in public. In September 2023, she opened Maison Gainsbourg to the public in Paris, turning the family’s history with Serge Gainsbourg into a living place. Lou Doillon, a singer since her 2012 debut album “Places”, brought the other half of the family voice, a musician talking to another musician, mother to daughter, stage to stage.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lou Doillon and a legacy that keeps breathing
Here is the observation that guided the homage. Grief can turn a figure into a monument. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon chose something else. They offered detail, silence, a few carefully placed names, and then let the work speak. That is what readers look for after a farewell, a path to go back through the songs and films without getting lost or reducing a career to only one image.
Practical helps matter when emotion runs high. Charlotte Gainsbourg had already prepared a bridge with “Jane by Charlotte”, her 2021 documentary that sits close to the person behind the public image. Lou Doillon’s own albums, “Places” in 2012, “Lay Low” in 2015 and “Soliloquy” in 2019, echo the family’s melodic courage, not by imitation, by presence. The service did the same in one concentrated morning in Paris, then sent people back to the work.
To revisit Jane Birkin today without missing crucial chapters, start here :
- Album “Oh! Pardon tu dormais…” from 2020, created with Étienne Daho, a late work that sounds remarkably present.
- Film “Je t’aime moi non plus” from 1976, directed by Serge Gainsbourg, the on screen pulse of a partnership that shaped a decade.
- Documentary “Jane by Charlotte” from 2021, directed by Charlotte Gainsbourg, intimate and precise.
- Maison Gainsbourg, 5 bis rue de Verneuil, Paris 7e, opened to the public in September 2023, check opening hours on the official adress.
One thing stood out in Paris. The tribute was not a curtain call. It was a relay. On 24 July 2023, the family’s voices faced the crowd, then pointed back to the catalogue and the films that made Jane Birkin both British and deeply French. The songs remain, the images remain, and the daughters continue to show where to look next.