The second of Gainsbourg’s four feature films, Équateur is the only one adapted from a book, Le Coup de lune by Georges Simenon (1933), which tells the story of a love affair in colonial and racist Gabon of the 1950s. Although it is the eroticism and brutality of the relationship between Timar and Adèle that interests Gainbourg above all, he takes special care to offer a vision of Africa that moves away from exotic clichés. Shot on location, the film is set in a humid and heavy atmosphere. For his project, Gainsbourg-the-composer takes a back seat to Gainsbourg-the-director with a greatly reduced musical score. If there is indeed a musical vision of Africa, it is not in the music, but rather in the treatment of the voices and sounds analysed here in detail. As Gainsbourg said, “In fact, the film is the music.”