After Sex-shop (1972) and Je t’aime moi non plus (1976), the collaboration between Serge Gainsbourg and the director-producer Claude Berri reached its culmination in Je vous aime, released at the beginning of the 1980s. This movie tells the story of Alice (Catherine Deneuve), a seductive young woman who fails to thrive in her successive romantic relationships, undermined by daily life and the wear and tear of time. Constructed as a succession of flashbacks, the narrative revolves around five original songs with music and lyrics by Gainsbourg, who also took on the role of Simon, the central figure of the destructive lover. With the exception of a piano version of ‘La Fautive’, a central theme associated with the character of Alice, these songs, which the viewer discovers at different stages of progress, are mainly diegetic and highlight the relationship to time, through a mirror game between artistic creation and the vagaries of existence. They also create an unsettling confusion between fiction and reality, due especially to the fact that the singer, who had gotten back on track a year earlier with the album Aux armes et caetera (1979), appeared true to the image he was conveying to the public, that of a brilliant and provocative creator, endowed with a scathing sense of humour serving a misogyny in tune with the times.