Women, wine & chansons: A frisky homage to Serge

A new film on Serge Gainsbourg stars a dead ringer for the late, legendary Gitane-smoking singer and French national treasure. Yet despite a powerful central performance from Eric Elmosnino as well as others, Gainsbourg inevitably falls prey to an overstuffed vignette-based plot as first-time filmmaker Joann Sfar attempts to cram in as many biological tidbits as possible.

This oversight not withstanding, Gainsbourg, which is released in Britain on Friday, offers an unconventional take on an idiosyncratic individual. Writer-director Sfar is a French comic-book artist who has used his own graphic novel Gainsbourg (Vie heroique) (Gainsbourg, a Heroic Life) as the basis for the film. Gainsbourg charts the singer's rise to fame in the 1960s, his brushes with scandal over songs about orgasms and oral sex and his flamboyant excursions into alt-rock in the 1970s.

The result is an entertaining and inventive take on the biopic genre which sees Gainsbourg swimming among a school of chain-smoking fish and followed by a life-size puppet that only he can see. Meanwhile a series of flashbacks to Nazi-occupied France show young Serge (Kacey Mottet-Klein) being chased down the street by an anti-Semitic character.

As well as a soundtrack filled with classic Gainsbourg tunes, another highlight of the film is a string of the artist's muses - with many of the actresses as perfectly cast as Elmosnino. They include Laetitia Casta as the sultry Brigitte Bardot, Anna Mouglalis as slinky chanteuse Juliette Greco and Sara Forestier as pop sweetheart France Gall. In the role of Je t'aime singer Jane Birkin is Lucy Gordon, the British actress who committed suicide in her Paris flat in May 2009 shortly after the film's completion. Gainsbourg is dedicated to her.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:Andrew Male, Empire: "Eric Elmosnino miraculously nails Gainsbourg's louche, lupine suavity and beguiling vulnerability, and scenes of the composer's early life - a Felliniesque fairy tale where he’s tutored by vampiric puppet alter-ego, Gainsbarre - are truly powerful. Inexplicably, the second hour lurches into rock biopic cliches -drugs, bad wigs, and the cheesy recreation of the hit composition."

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: " It is a shame [that] the film has already played its strongest cards by the end of the '60s, resulting in an all-too-familiar slide into ravaged self-caricature in its sketchy account of Gainsbourg’s final decades. It's as if Sfar has run out of things to say, but while the movie’s on a roll, it's zesty, engaging and frisky." (3/5 stars)

Bernard Besserglik, Hollywood Reporter: "The movie is too much an act of hero-worship for there to be any critical distance. Cliche lurks, and the portrayal of Gainsbourg will reinforce stereotypes of the suave, cynical, self-indulgent French male."

Jordan Mintzer, Variety: "Thesps are more remarkable for their resemblances to their real-life figures than for their dramatic engagement. Still, a few impersonations - especially Sara Forestier imitating pop sweetheart France Gall - are hilarious." ·