Stars and strangers bid farewell to Jane Birkin, “ex-sixties fan,” as she sang, during a touching funeral at Saint-Roch church in Paris on Monday.
• Also read: Jane Birkin’s daughters open up about ‘her bitter battle with the disease’
• Also read: Jane Birkin, casual fashion icon
• Also read: Singer and actress Jane Birkin has died at the age of 76
The ceremony was attended by her daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, who unusually carried their mother’s coffin as they entered the church.
AFP
Many celebrities were also present: Étienne Daho, Carole Bouquet, Catherine Deneuve, Yvan Attal, Chiara Mastroianni or Isabelle Huppert, welcomed by the artist’s agent.
AFP
Brigitte Macron and Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak also took their places in the church, whose square was decorated with flowers, and gave testimony to the national unrest sparked by the disappearance of the singer and actress last Sunday at the age of 76.
AFP
“I can already see the void she is leaving us. She is my mother, our mother. “Your mother,” Charlotte Gainsbourg read, deeply moved, weeping as anonymous people — more than 1,500, according to one AFP journalist — gathered in front of a large screen near the church. Access to the church was reserved for the entourage.
AFP
– insolence –
Lou Doillon recalled many moments shared with her mother and her entire family, all of which testified to the eccentricity, daring and humor of the French’s favorite Englishwoman. She finished: “Mom […] Thank you for not being ordinary, reasonable and docile. This world of tomorrow, very peaceful and reasonable, that’s already annoying me.”
AFP
The hour-and-a-half ceremony was celebrated in the Anglican rite and punctuated by poignant tributes, including that of the doctor who saw her through her leukaemia. The coffin was then carried to La Javanaise to the applause of the audience.
Jane Bikin, Londoner, naturalized French but stuck in the collective unconscious English with her delicious accent errors, has been part of the landscape for more than half a century and since her meeting with Serge Gainsbourg in the late 1960s.
AFP
“Without her we lack light, I adored this dedicated artist who can empathize with essential causes,” commented Jean-Baptiste, who was from Burgundy, holding a sign that read “Thank you Jane Birkin” and “Jane Forever”.
AFP
“We came to pay tribute to whoever supported us from the beginning by cutting off a strand of our hair after Mahsa Amini’s murder,” explained Mahasti, in her fifties, also carrying a sign that read, “Thank you Jane, Iranian women will not forget you.”
AFP
“She’s one of those stars that conveys freedom,” commented Serge Quin, 60. “His smile is an era and a generation that gave us that spontaneity,” added Bouchra, 50.
“One day I saw her at the Odéon, I ran up to her and told her I love her! She gave me a kiss and wished me a happy new year,” said Christophe Fougeray, 45, “in love with Jane since childhood” and whose music he loves as much as the films.
AFP
– “icon” –
“My Jane, thanks to your talent, your elegant, free beauty, your sharp, macabre and British humor you have accompanied our gloomy youth. We wanted to be you or Serge,” wrote Étienne Daho in his tribute, singer-turned-close-friend and with the singer on latest album Oh! worked together. I’m sorry you slept…
“Party to join your Serge, Romy and all the others… Another angel… Thank you, thank you, my Jane!” For his part, responded in a message sent to AFP on Monday by Alain Delon, who had filmed with her in the swimming pool.
“Because she embodied freedom, because she sang the most beautiful words in our language, Jane Birkin was a French icon,” President Macron said on Twitter.
Ever since the artist was found dead in her Paris home, admirers, sometimes holding bouquets of flowers, have flocked to 5 bis rue Verneuil in Paris. The place where she stayed with Serge Gainsbourg as the couple embodied the marriage of chic and shock accompanied by a touch of scandal.
Flowers also hung on the picket fence surrounding the pool actress’s home in Brittany. On Monday, at the same time, there was also a ceremony in Lannilis (Finistère), where she liked to recharge her batteries.
The disappearance of the Di doo dah and lingerie chics singer, who according to those close to her died of natural causes, happened just as Jane Birkin was about to return to the stage.