Product Details

• Actors: Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Daniel Gelin, Henri-Jacques Huet, Andrea Parisy
• Directors: Pierre Grimblat
• Format: Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Cult Epics
• DVD Release Date: September 30, 2008
• Run Time: 180 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B001BP14Q2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #140,555 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Serge Fabergé (played by Serge Gainsbourg) is an award-winning commercial director with a lovely wife who is about to give birth to their first child. However, he is not content. In the midst of a mid-life crisis, he meets a woman half his age named Evelyne (Jane Birkin) and starts a relationship on the side. Their whirlwind and ultimately doomed love affair escalates when he divorces his wife and they move in together. Now Serge has some competition in form of a much younger man who fights very hard for Evelyne s affection.

Director Pierre Grimblat delivers a colorful spectacle of a film with supreme editing and a great satirical side. The fast pace holds up for quite a while before settling down but not slowing to a crawl, thank God. The minimalist storyline of two people who are destined to fall in love and break each other s hearts is rarely dull thanks to the interesting delivery.

The inimitable Serge Gainsbourg is awesome as Serge Fabergé; although he is not the most likeable guy in the world, to say the least. He is creative and eccentric in his work but can be painfully common and banal in his life. Blatantly cheating on his pregnant wife with a woman half his age and then running off with her. Nice going, champ. But Gainsbourg is so charming and the character is so well conceived that you can t help but be sucked into his story.

Jane Birkin breathes life into Evelyne, a young woman who can be vivacious, lovely, naïve, obvious, and sometimes quite shrill. Like her lover, she has a great deal to lose in this conspicuously doomed relationship and she is totally convinced that there is no turning back. Both she and Gainsbourg would go on to star in Antonio Margheriti s Seven Deaths In The Cat s Eye.

The story of Slogan is nothing new but it is told with style and attitude and features superb performances from everyone involved. The film is a pop classic with an excellent soundtrack that has aged very well. It embraces commercial culture with delight and remains entertaining even during its heavier moments. Plus, any movie that uses etiolated in the dialogue is pretty super special.

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DVD Stuff:

The Cult Epics non-anamorphic widescreen print of Slogan looks very good though the colors seem a little flat. The French mono audio is clear with easy to read English subtitles. The feature disc contains the film s theatrical trailer. On the extras disc are interviews with Jane Birkin and Pierre Grimblat. They are very candid about the making of the film and Birkin is especially warm and funny. When the subject turns to actor and pop music producer/pioneer Serge Gainsbourg, it strays from the making of Slogan. Also on the disc are some excellent French TV commercials from director Grimblat. --Doomed Moviethon

Product Description

SLOGAN - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thank heaven for little girls, February 19, 2010

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slogan (DVD)

"Slogan" is that type of film that French cinema seems to do better than anyone else, A mix-and-match of almost unlikeable characters who are redeemed by their love for each other. It is the type of love that is unfathomable and sometimes cruel, but made romantic by the artistry of the director's camera and the illogical logic of a screenplay (Betty Blue, anyone?)

In this case, the two misfits are Serge Faberge (Serge Gainsbourg, a popular French musician and actor who also wrote the score) and Evelyne (Jane Birkin, Blow Up). Serge is a forty year old advertisement director with a pregnant wife named Francoise (Andrea Parisy) and a bad case of ennui. His life is satisfyingly dull, with his skills as a director much in demand and his commercials constantly winning awards. At one such awards festival, in Venice, Serge meets the eighteen year old Evelyne, and in a case of lust at first sight the two are soon engaged in a torrid affair. You can probably figure out the rest of the story.

The back-story of "Slogan" gives it as much of its status as the film itself. A scandal erupted when the real-life Serge and Jane (the woman for whom designer Hermes' created the Birkin Bag for) started an off-screen romance that lasted for an eleven-year marriage and saw the release of the duet Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus (""I love you... me neither") which was a Number One hit even though it was banned for Birkin's simulating an orgasm as part of the song. Disco queen Donna Summers later covered the song and also imitated it for her own Love to Love You Baby.

As a movie, "Slogan" is a pleasant piece of nostalgia. It embodies that "Swinging 60s" -style later mocked by the Austin Powers films. Serge is the embodiment of Gallic charm and indifference, with heavy-lidded eyes and an ever-present cigarette always dangling from his lips. He casually discusses with Evelyne's step-father the best way to beat her in order to keep the girl in line, and is as quick to answer Evelyne's demands with a smack in the mouth as with a kiss. Evelyne, on the other hand, is a child in mind as well as body, unsophisticated and willing to let Serge take control, with a child's need for affection and devotion. She has none of Serge's cynicism.

Her first starring role in a film (she had previously been eye candy in other Swinging 60s films like The Knack... and How to Get It), Jane Birkin is not the most talented actress, but looks devastating in the small dresses and 60s fashion that she constantly bounces around in. She would later earn the OBE in 2001, for her long music and film career as well as her humanitarian causes, but in "Slogan" she is still a novice.

Probably my favorite bits of "Slogan" were Serge's commercials, which are over-the-top stabs at the consumerist culture that ruled at the time. There are some real gems here, like an adventurer doing battle with knife-wielding natives and comparing their knife cuts to the smoothness of his shaving cream, or a naked women getting whipped by kilt-wearing Scotsman and asking if your complexion ever needs to get "whipped into shape.

Cult Epics release of "Slogan" is a nice presentation, especially in this two-disk special edition. The print is not the most pristine, and Cult Epics is not known for their restoration, but it is nice to have this rare film available in any condition. The first disk has only the main feature, and the second disk being loaded with extra features including interviews with Birkin and Gainsbourg being very much in love, as well as behind-the-scenes glimpses at the advertising world so effectively spoofed by "Slogan."