There's no stopping her now. I wouldn't know if it's big news, but it seems, despite a reputation for terminal shyness, she is thinking about singing live. "People have asked me to. I thought that I wouldn't like it, but then Air are doing their concerts all over the world at the moment, and I went with them for four shows. It was quite terrifying. I only did two songs. I got a glimpse of what it could be, and I don't think I was very good, but I wasn't disgusted by it. I thought, maybe with a bit more work on my side I could do something."
More philosophizing follows. I ask whether she finds making music more rewarding. "It's true: music is much more personal. But in acting there's a great deal of pleasure in speaking someone else's words. You put a lot of yourself into a film: you have to base everything on who you are and who you know. The two are very separate for me. That's the joy of it: of being able to go from a recording studio to a film set. There's no link."
Will she do another album? "It was such a perfect thing for me, the perfect crew, with Jarvis - so I don't want it to be the last one. But it's difficult for me to know what I want to do."
That, you sense, is something she runs up against pretty often these days; she must be spoiled for choice now. Sadly, though, there are no more Gauloise-fogged insights to be had; it's time to leave. But there's a coda: at the Cannes film festival, I stumbled into the premiere of her mother's autobiographical film, Boites (Boxes). Jane Birkin plays her lightly fictionalized self, and it's easy to spot the Serge and Charlotte simulacra. Birkin doesn't hide the fact that she considers her split with Gainsbourg the biggest mistake of her life, and tells her middle daughter, here called Camille: "You're everything I wanted to be, only prettier!" (If the internal politics of the Birkin family couldn't get any knottier, Camille - written as a curious mixture of attention-seeking and self-effacement - is played by Gainsbourg's half-sister, Lou Doillon.) But Boites clears up one outstanding mystery. The first time Jane opens her mouth, everything becomes clear. That's where Charlotte gets her surreally plummy English accent from. We can all sleep a little easier now.
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