A marriage of life and art: the celebrity coupledom of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Attal

Abstract

ABSTRACT In addition to playing characters, stars can represent a story and this is true both of individual stars and star couples. The story of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Attal – one of France’s most famous couples – unfolds both onscreen and offscreen and is articulated in a play of signification across various representations. Gainsbourg and Attal have made several films together, including three directed by Attal in which they play a couple. With reference to these films as a trilogy and to extra-cinematic material, this article considers how the Attal/Gainsbourg celebrity couple is narrativised through the interplay of their onscreen and offscreen presences. It examines how the ‘reality’ of the offscreen couple is both reinforced and undermined by the ‘fiction’ of the onscreen couple, particularly through the use of the romantic comedy genre, which engages with established cultural norms around coupling in France. The article interweaves a reading of these films into an analysis of the couple’s cultural life to examine how the onscreen couple nuance ideas of legitimate coupling norms, including through an appeal to their everyday authenticity.