In celebration of the January release of IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s latest album, which was produced by Beck, Gainsbourg will be performing two shows at The Bell House in Brooklyn (1/19, 1/20), tickets for which go on sale today at noon.
Other Gainsbourg delights in January include a screening of her latest film, Antichrist, directed by Lars von Trier and costarring Willem Dafoe, for which Gainsbourg garnered an award for Best Actress at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Listen to “Heaven Can Wait,” from IRM, while you read:
Charlotte Gainsbourg is the daughter of French singer/provocateur Serge Gainsbourg and British actress Jane Birkin, the couple known for their duet “Je t’aime…moi non plus” (“I love you…me neither”), which was controversial in 1968 for its explicit sexual content and Birkin’s orgasm sounds. Taking on the family mantle of risque twosomes, at 13 Gainsbourg recorded her debut album, Charlotte for Ever, with the now infamous song “Lemon Incest,” the father-daughter duet that caused much controversy for its sexually advanced tone, and well, the subject. The mood of her early recordings mirrored her early films, which included 1986’s L’Effrontee (for which she won a César for Most Promising Young Actress), 1988’s La Petite Voleuse, and 1991’s Merci la Vie.
Charlotte Gainsbourg’s pursuit of careers in both film and music 
seems like a natural manifestation of genetic inheritance, and no one can say she’s not as savvy as her Gauloises-smoking dad. Gainsbourg’s album, 5:55, featured songwriting and performance by Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon and Air. In IRM, Gainsbourg’s third studio-recorded album, she’s taken a similar tack and has collaborated with Grammy nominated multi-instrumentalist Beck, who not only produced but wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics. Gainsbourg used the harrowing experience of a water-skiing related head-injury and the ensuing period of rehabilitation and reflection as inspiration for the album.
Alongside her developing music career, Gainsbourg has been steadily gaining ground as an actress to contend with. She’s appeared in numerous notable films some of the more prominent ones being Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep (2006) and Todd Haynes’s Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (2007). In Gainsbourg’s latest film, Antichrist, director Lars von Trier, taking on the horror genre, places a man and a woman (Gainsbourg and Dafoe), named only “He” and “She,” in a cabin in the woods after the death of their daughter and gives them up to nature.
Here’s a rundown of where to see Gainsbourg in the city.
12/30/2009 12:00 Noon – Tickets go on sale for her January performances at The Bell House (1/19, 1/20). Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 the day of the performance.
1/13/2010 8:00pm – Antichrist screens at the Museum of Modern Art. 11 W. 53rd Street. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gainsbourg made a surprise appearance at the screening. After all, she will be in New York. Watch the official trailer here.
1/19/2010 8:00pm – Performance at The Bell House. Get tickets here.
1/20/2010 8:00pm – Performance at The Bell House. Get tickets here.
1/26/2010 – IRM released by Because Music/Elektra
