British actress Lucy Gordon's suicide casts a dark shadow over premiere of long-awaited Serge Gainsbourg biopic
It is the film that singles out and celebrates the life of one of France's most creative and original sons.
It was also to have been the platform for Lucy Gordon's rebirth as a serious actress.
But Gainsbourg: Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus, which goes on release this week, will be remembered for neither reason.
Because the Oxford-born Gordon killed herself aged 28 in May last year, weeks after finishing filming on what is already being billed as the French film of the year.
And her death casts a dark shadow over the Serge Gainsbourg biopic.
Long-awaited: Lucy Gordon as Jane Birkin and Eric Elmosnino as Serge Gainsbourg in Gainsbourg: Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus
Tragic: Gordon at the premiere of Spider Man 3
After years of making ends meet with bit parts in movies such as Spider-Man 3, Gordon beat more than 500 other actresses to the role of Jane Birkin, the one true love of Gainsbourg.
Actress Birkin met the French poet, artist and musician in the heady days of Paris 1969, becoming his muse.
She had auditioned for a film, Slogan, despite not speaking French, after the collapse of her marriage to an English composer.
Birkin and Gainsbourg, who counted Brigitte Bardot among his lovers, were an item for 11 years, during which time she starred in the classic Agatha Christie mystery Death On The Nile and breathed the rude bits on Gainsbourg's sexually explicit Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus, which was banned in England.
Gordon's performance in the film has been praised by Birkin herself.
'There was such honesty, such freshness in her face that I could not have been more flattered,' she told Le Nouvel Observateur last week.
'She left as she had come. With great modesty.
'She had grace, When I heard of her death I couldn't believe it was true.'
Gordon died before watching the finished film, which has been praised by French critics.
She hanged herself at the flat she shared with her boyfriend, Jerome Almeras, the cinematographer behind Kristin Scott Thomas hit film I’ve Loved You So Long.
He found her body in their £2,000-a-month rented mansion flat in Paris when he woke up on the morning of May 20, two days before her birthday.
She was said to have been 'deeply affected' by the death of a close friend.
On Thursday night hundreds of fans in leather jackets and leopard print coats gathered in Paris for the world premiere of the long-awaited biopic, now dedicated to Gordon's memory. It goes on general release on Wednesday.
Director Joann Sfar said: 'I think about Lucy all the time, I am not the only one. This film is for her.'
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