FS Rerun: Joanna

  • Posted on 07/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Guuz probably recalls when I posted this first, maybe three or four years ago. Gee, Joanna. I’m still in love with her.

She had the looks of a Francoise Hardy with sex: Canadian born actress Joanna Shimkus, who appeared in only two handful of movies (after those, Sidney Poitier married her right from the spot). Robert Enrico’s classic Les Aventuriers (1967) made her immortal: a melancholy ménage a trois with her torn between Delon and Lino Ventura, the finest romantic triangle movie of them all, miles above and lots more fun than Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. The soundtrack is by composer wizard Francois de Roubaix, kind of a French Morricone of the 60s who scored most gallic noir movies of the time, an artist of pure genius who drowned near Tenerife in 1975. Joanna’s probably only recorded song is a tune from Les Aventuriers, but not in the (strictly instrumental scored) movie  – a wonderfully laid-back campfire version, simply irresistible.

Joanna Shimkus – Les Aventuriers

As for her only recorded song, I was wrong. Loin is a tender sweeper from Robert Enrico’s movie Tante Zita, provided then by an FS friend, and in Ces mots stupides Joanna teamed up with Sacha Distel (!) for the French version of Something Stupid, immortalized by Nancy Sinatra and her blue-eyed daddy in September 1967.

Joanna Shimkus – Loin

Joanna Shimkus & Sacha Distel – Ces mots stupides

FS Rerun: Mauve

  • Posted on 07/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

I’ve had many crushes on female singers posted on this blog. Mauve was one of them. She vanished into thin air. Such a shame. The piece below was posted in 2006.

Chère Mauve,

No, your song A La Vie A La Mort is not in the Filles Sourires 15. Why? Because it is hors categorie. When I heard it the for the first time on your MySpace-site, I fell in love. Completely: butterflies in my belly, dreamy gaze, the urge to light up 100 candles, throw rosepetals on the floor and read Byron-poems. The works.
Your ultra-sexy, husky voice, the dramatic piano, the fuzzguitar, the slow, sultry rhythm: even when I try to describe it, it tingles everywhere. The short video that was made for the song, shows a gorgeous, doe-eyed girl in a white dress: a little girl lost. I’ve watched it probably 50 times – and still get annoyed when the film ends before the song ends. What happened? Ran out of tape? Did it become to emotional for you? Was the cameraman too hot ‘n bothered?
There’s a lot of questions regarding you. There not a scrap of biographical information, the only thing I know is that you’re living in Paris, and that you and a bunch of great musicians and even a better producer (is that him, the backing vocals on Boire a la Source?) made at least two wonderful, very filmic tracks. Very Air-working-with-Charlotte, Guy Chambers & Sophie Hunter or J-L Murat & Jenifer Charles. Among the things you love, stated on your MySpace-site, are artists like Scissor Sisters, Nico, Uffie, Joy Division, Satie, Tchaikowsky (you don’t say, with all those dramatic pianochords) and post pre-90’s Madonna. So: you like to dress up, boogie down and be moved to tears. But that’s about all I (we) get to know. Google draws blanks. You like to tease: almost every message you’ve send me, ends with sentences like ‘French kiss’, or ‘Je t’embrasse’. Makes the butterflies go nuts,I can tell you that. It took a while before I got the mp3’s of your songs, which I think you did on purpose: the hunt is better than the catch. So please, stay as mysterious as long as possible. But keep wowing me (us) with beautiful songs and beautiful pictures.

Mauve – A la vie a la mort
Mauve – Boire a la source

FS Rerun: Els & Daan

  • Posted on 06/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Many visitors wrote guestposts for FillesSourires, this one’s from Joachim from 2005:

The first time I heard this song was in the Belgian movie Meisje. I liked it a lot but somehow forgot about it. Until I heard it on the radio – on that moment I was sure I knew that song all of my life. Wrong! Belgian artist Daan (of Dead Man Ray-fame)made this track in 2002. You can find it on the bonus-cd of Bridge Burner (2003) and now on the excellent cd Cinema (2006).
E-zine Ultra wrote: ‘Once again I’m sure quite a few eighties electropop revivalists will be jealous of this catchy ànd classy single. Jamais Neutral is sophisticated lightweight pop-with-synthesizers which sounds as if Lio (or Vanessa Paradis or…) had been given a song by Gainsbourg and then produced by Telex. Quel craftsmanship! Incredible, too, how well Dottermans (one of Belgium’s top actresses) performs.’

Daan feat. Els Dottermans – Jamais Neutral

FS Rerun: L’autre Brigitte

  • Posted on 05/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Because of the 5th anniversary of this blog, we will re-run a few legendary postings:

The French adult cinema of the 70s was about carnal excess as well as about hedonism, politics, and libertinage. For a brief moment, especially in the key year 1978, movies like Perversion d’une jeune mariée or Je suis à prendre transcended smut and sleaze into an art form – particularly due to the spellbinding presence of the young Brigitte Lahaie who managed to fill even the lewdest scenes with a kind of radiant innocence.

Her only single, Caresse Tendresse, recorded in 1987 for the Clever label, regrettably doesn’t emanate quite the same sensual poetry and magic – Brigitte’s voice clearly wasn’t her strongest physical asset, and the song itself sounds like a dancefloor collaboration between the „Vu de l’extérieur“ Gainsbourg and a sedated church organist. So what? As for Brigitte, it was a labor of love anyway.

Bonus: The title track from the 1980 Lahaie movie „Secrets d’adolescentes“ (a.k.a. „Le Porno esperienze di Luca e Fanny“), a voluptuous soundscape by the great Roberto Pregadio that was also used in Franco Prosperi’s nunploitation shocker „La Settima Donna“. Ethereal moaning not by Brigitte, but by the similarly magnificent Edda Dell’Orso, better known for her teamworks with Ennio Morricone – the queen of wordless erotic vocals of Italian cinema.

Brigitte Lahaie – Caresse tendresse

Roberto Pregadio – Secrets d’adolescentes

In addition to our original post: Pregadio’s super-sleazoid reprise of his gorgeous theme, including a funk guitar with a porn star moustache.

Roberto Pregadio – La Settima Donna (Ripresa)

Trust Mesrine

  • Posted on 05/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Last year saw Jean-Francois Richet’s L’instinct de Mort, a gritty and classy gangster movie about Jacques Mesrine, France’s Public Enemy No. 1 in the Seventies. Music-wise, French Punk rockers Trust payed tribute to Mesrine with two songs on their meanwhile classic 1980 album Répression, an angry blast of antisocial attitude and Stooges drive: Instinct de mort reflects on Mesrine’s autobiography of the same title, and Le Mitard (The Dungeon) is based on a poem written by Mesrine in the maximum-security wing of Fleury Merogis prison. Today, Mesrine’s image has changed quite grotesquely; his autobiography was re-published in Flammarion’s Pop Culture program line (see right).

Trust – Le Mitard

Trust – Instinct de Mort

Eighth Wonder

  • Posted on 03/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Patsy Kensit rose to fame thanks to her Bardot-ish looks and movies like Absolute Beginners and Lethal Weapon 2. She sang with the band Eighth Wonder, started by her brother Jamie. They released two albums and a set of remixes, but none of those cd’s included the French version of hitsingle I’m Not Scared. The song was written and produced by The Pet Shop Boys (Gainsbourg-fans, they did their own version of Je t’aime…).The English version is very catchy, while J’ai pas peur (b-side to the vinyl-single of I’m Not Scared) is a sighing-feast. Like it should be.

Eighth Wonder – J’ai pas peur

Bardot, Coppola, Dior

  • Posted on 03/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Brigitte Bardot in a commercial shot by Sofia Coppola for a fragrance by Dior. Yep, it’s from 2008 but I never saw this ‘director’s cut’ before, and the song is a surprise too (though it’s from a Best Of cd by Bardot, I seem to have missed it completely).

Brigitte Bardot – Moi je joue

Five Years of Filles

  • Posted on 02/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

This month, FillesSourires.com celebrates it’s fifth anniversary, which means that I will post a lot of goodies, we will look back on legendary posts and I asked several musicians and a dj to come up with an extra special present for all ye faithful visitors. To kick off, here are two Gainsbourg-covers that were never issued on cd, and I never saw them posted before.

First off is Antoinette, a YeYe-singer who I know nothing about. It’s not the British singer of the same name, my guess is she’s Belgian, because the vinyl-single that I ripped was given away free with Belgian magazine Panorama. There was also this version, but the girl on the cover looks very different from the cover I have.
Trumpet Boy’s real name was Fernand Verstraete (born in 1925 in Rouen, died in 1992), who made several EP’s and albums with his ‘trompette-succès’. His version of Le claqueur des doigst stems from 1959 or ’60, and as you can hear my vinyl-copy isn’t in the best of shape. Which adds to the jazzy atmosphere, nonetheless.

Antoinette – Baby pop
Trumpet Boy – Le claqueur des doigts

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