Je t'aime moi non plus (film)


Je t'aime moi non plus is a 1976 feature film written, directed, and scored by Serge Gainsbourg, starring Jane Birkin, Hugues Quester and Joe Dallesandro, and featuring a cameo by Gérard Depardieu.

Plot

A frail and love-starved young woman, Johnny, works in a truckstop café in the middle of nowhere. One day enter two gay truckers, manly and worldwise Krassky and his lover Padovan, young and handsome, but immature and rather a handful.
Krassky, tired of taking care of Padovan who keeps getting into trouble, discovers in himself an attraction for this boyish girl, and she falls head over heels for him. They start a relationship; and even if at first Krassky's body hesitates before the meager feminine graces of curveless Johnny, he ends up being charmed by her naïve and unconditional love.
She is ready to accept anything out of love for him, including anal sex, though quite inexperienced at this, so that her screams of pain cause them to be thrown out of several motels. In the end, the back of Krassky's dirty garbage truck will be the theatre of their union.
Furiously jealous, Padovan tries to kill Johnny by suffocating her. Krassky intervenes and saves Johnny, but does it so idly that Johnny gets enraged and furiously insults him. Krassky then returns to his first love and leaves with him, abandoning Johnny in her café, brokenhearted and lonely again.

Cast

Je t'aime moi non plus was the first film directed by Gainsbourg. Jane Birkin was his partner at that time. It includes elements of symbolism recurrent in Gainsbourg's work: passion to the death and uncensored eroticism. Depardieu has a few short appearances, playing a passing cynical gay local.