Interview with the director Mireille Dumas.
Who is Françoise Hardy?
She is truly unique artist who writes her own songs and sings them in a voice with a highly particular timbre. She is also an incredibly beautiful woman with a rather aloof style. She could have been a model and was dressed by the biggest names, including Paco Rabanne and André Courrèges. Both androgynous and very feminine, she has always been fashionable and in keeping with her time, not only through her songs but also her physique and personality. She was also with another famous French singer, Jacques Dutronc, and together they formed a legendary couple.
How do you explain her huge success?
Françoise Hardy found fame during the yéyé period of the 1960s, but she was not like Sheila or Sylvie Vartan. She sang melancholic love songs with something so intriguing about them. She did not match the beauty standards of the day, she was different to her fellow singers, and her first love, Jean-Marie Perrier, helped push her into the spotlight. He actually said that he did not give her everything she wanted while they were together, as he was so obsessed with photographing her. She set out on a world tour in the 1960s and was adored in England. Mick Jagger and David Bowie were both crazy about her! Bob Dylan even insisted on meeting her during a concert in Paris, and sang “I Want You” to her. That’s how popular she is!
Françoise Hardy agreed to several interviews with you throughout her career. Can you tell us more?
I used four interviews in the documentary, which were filmed over a period of 30 years. The very first is from the 1980s and has never been seen before. She is very direct and expresses things exactly how she feels them. She has no filter and does not care about her image.
In the last interview, in 2017, she spoke to me about death and illness. You can see the evolution of her relationship with Dutronc, shifting from passion to detachment. She told me about him and how he never listened to her songs because they made him sad, before bursting out laughing. That struck me; she talked about terrible things with a lot of humor, and claimed, smiling, that their relation on earth was simply a “first draft.”
These conversations enabled me to follow her progress. She told me a little more each time. It was during our second interview that I understood a lot more about her and her childhood. The way she waited for Dutronc fascinated me, as did the way in which she suffered for love.
What parts of her did you what to show in this documentary?
I wanted to make connections between her work and her life. Her songs hold up a mirror to the times that she lived through and are a way of telling an intimate story of Françoise Hardy. I also wanted to show how she built her life in light of her unusual childhood. She grew up with her mother and her sister in a somewhat closed-off world – she refers to it as “restricted.” Her father was absent and married to another woman after being rejected by her mother. Her grandmother always told her that she was ugly, which left her with tremendous insecurities. Together they defined her relationship towards men.
While we see Françoise Hardy as an emancipated woman in what she says, someone who has a sense of humor and a direct manner, she has always depended on men and been controlled by love and her passions.
Françoise Hardy does not seem to like fame. Do you know why?
She was first discovered while studying in Germany and playing the guitar. When photographer Jean-Marie Perrier fell deeply in love with her, she was astonished that someone thought she was beautiful. Her family had always insisted that she would never be attractive! Jean-Marie later said that she was the most difficult woman to photograph; she disliked everything associated with fame, and started her career almost reluctantly. She is something of an anti-icon, worshiped for her image despite hating people looking at her. She did like expressing herself through her songs, but she said that she could have done something completely different and quickly stopped performing live. It even made her uncomfortable when fans came to congratulate her!
Text by: Juliette Démas
Translated from French by: Alexander Uff
Using songs, archive footage, and interviews carried out over the last 30 years, the documentary Françoise Hardy, une icône looks back over the life and career of a singer-songwriter like no other.