This article addresses areas of French Star Studies by looking at ‘stars at home’. Its focus is on the affective aspects of this fascination, in relation to intimacy, longing and private worlds. The stakes of this are high at a moment when #MeToo is casting light on the French film industry. The article looks at Charlotte Gainsbourg’s loving documentary about her mother, Jane Birkin, Jane par Charlotte/Jane by Charlotte (2021). The complex relation of Charlotte and Jane to the French film industry and its narratives of older men and younger women, fathers and daughters, is discussed. Charlotte’s film is seen as, in various ways, a feminist work with fresh perspectives on fascination with stars and intimacy. Jane par Charlotte is read as a film about two houses, Kachalou, the last house of Jane Birkin, recently sold (2024), and the Maison Gainsbourg, the house of Charlotte’s father Serge Gainsbourg, recently opened as a museum (2023). Charlotte Gainsbourg, as filmmaker, is shown to pay particular attention to the display of photographs in each house, creating in the film montages of these images through which to highlight questions of memory, voyeurism and vulnerability.
Emma Wilson (Sat,) studied this question.