Jean-Louis Aubert wrote both the music and lyrics for the song "Alter Ego." He released the song in 2001 on the solo album “Comme un accord” and an acoustic version was re-issued in 2009 on Aubert’s album “Première Prises.”

"Alter Ego" is a term that indicates an alternative personality or second identity that can assume different roles depending on the context. At a basic level, it can mean a close friend who knows you as well as you do yourself. It can also mean a secondary identity with entirely different characteristics that compensate for one’s own deficiencies.

In 1974, Aubert and Caudron spent a formative 5 months together hitchhiking and busking across the US. In this capacity, they were among the throng of young French people that Maxime Le Forestier had lured to the US by his 1972 musical tribute to “La Maison Bleu” in his hit song “San Francisco.”

Despite their early camaraderie, differences in musical style, leadership ambitions, drug addiction and geographic separation led eventually to a parting of ways between Aubert and Caudron. Their lives diverged when Aubert joined Louis Bertignac in 1976 to form the band Téléphone. Caudron founded an ephemeral 3-person group “Lili Drop” in 1978 that had a respected but short shelf-life. In 1996, Caudron left Paris to establish himself, his wife and child in France’s southwest Basque country. Over the years, Olivier fell victim to drugs and HIV and died of tuberculosis in 2006. His biography by Jean-François Jacq carries the suggestive title “Le Soleil noir du rock français” (“The Black Sun of French rock”). Caudron learned only shortly before his death that he was the “alter ego” in Aubert’s song.

​Although the song “Alter ego” was written several years before the film and arose from Aubert’s relationship with “Olive” Caudron, it fit Claudel’s thematic structure like a bespoke suit. The major themes of the film include a prolonged period (15 years) of absence between two sisters (“il manque un temps a ma vie…”), one of whom was in jail, followed by a painful quest (“Où tu es, j'irai te chercher…”) to restore their close relationship (“Dans mon cœur rien ne change…”). It represents a felicitous mating of musical context with cinematic narrative. Aubert was nominated for the César Award for "Best Music Written for a Film" (although it was written well before the film) and the film itself won several awards.

​NB:

Il manque un temps à ma vie translates to "A piece of time is missing from my life." In view of its inclusion in a song, this phrase may also have a subtle second meaning of a musical beat of time.

à l'ennui: this phrase translates literally as “to the point of boredom” but serves here mainly as an intensifier of the preceding phrase “Il manque ton rire.”

baie des anges (Bay of Angels) is a large bay of water in the Mediterranean Sea between Nice and Antibes. Aubert’s reference carries a metaphorical allusion to a calm, peaceful resting place, which was at least premature in the case of Caudron, who died early at 50 of tuberculosis in 2006, five years after the song appeared.