An Evening with Jane Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg

Join us for a special one-night-only event with the celebrated duo. The evening will include a film from each of their extraordinary body of works—Jane Birkin in La Pirate, followed by Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist—with a conversation to take place between screenings.

Antichrist also screens Friday, January 29 at 4:00pm, and La Pirate will screen again Monday, February 1 at 7:00pm.

Antichrist
Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland, 2009, 35mm, 108m
Lars von Trier’s ultra-violent Antichrist scandalized audiences upon its premiere at Cannes, where Charlotte Gainsbourg’s fearless performance won her the award for Best Actress. Divided into chapters and distilled through Anthony Dod Mantle’s downcast lensing, the film follows He and She, a grieving couple played by Willem Dafoe and Gainsbourg, who retreat to an isolated cabin after their infant’s death. But in seclusion their situation goes from bad to worse, as He becomes haunted by peculiar visions and She reveals violent sexual behavior that together crescendo to a harrowing climax. Antichrist is considered the first installment of von Trier’s unofficially titled “Depression Trilogy,” followed by Melancholia and Nymphomaniac—Gainsbourg appears in all three. An NYFF47 selection.

La Pirate
Jacques Doillon, France, 1984, 35mm, 88m
English and French with English subtitles
On a rain-slicked night, Alma (Jane Birkin), a married woman, is whisked away to a hotel by her female ex-lover (Maruschka Detmers). So begins a long night’s journey into extreme emotional violence, as the two women make love, quarrel, and confront their love-hate feelings for each other—a volatile situation that’s pushed into overdrive when Alma’s husband (played by Birkin’s brother, Andrew, in a bit of provocatively incestuous casting) shows up. Meanwhile, a mystery: just who is the gun-toting teenage girl and the oddball gentleman seemingly along for the ride? Stylish, sexy, and subtly surreal, this fever-pitch portrait of amour fou is bathed in shadowy neo-noir atmosphere courtesy of cinematographer extraordinaire Bruno Nuytten. Print courtesy of the Institut Français.