La Vie En Rose Reviewed by Kristin Foster Starring Marion Cotillard, Jean-Pierre Martins and Gerard Depardieu Directed by Olivier Dahan    France, 1929: The young daughter of a former circus performer stands in a square, forced to sing for her supper as her father’s antics fail to draw a crowd. The girl opens her mouth and belts out the first song she can think of and the world around her stops. Captivated, not realizing they are witnessing history, the onlookers dab tears from their eyes, so touched are they by the girl with her heart in her throat.La Vie En Rose, the French biopic about Edith Piaf, is at once incredibly tragic and uplifting. Born Édith Giovanna Gassion to a café singer and a street acrobat, Piaf spent her life stumbling over misery after misery, never truly escaping the ghosts of her past. She was discovered at the age of nineteen by club owner Louis Leplée who gave Piaf her famous last name, Parisian slang for “sparrow.” Despite her very slight build and chronic poor health, Piaf’s strong, emotive voice made her a legend. Director Olivier Dahan presents the movie in jostling, colourful vignettes that are entirely out of order. He leaves it up to the viewer to pick up the scattered pieces and put them back together. This allows some scenes to pose questions while others answer them. In one, a young Piaf is captivated by a doll in a shop window. The doll’s porcelain oval face is punctuated by thin, long eyebrows and a pair of red lips—a look that Piaf herself would later adopt as a performer. Yes, it’s another biopic but it stands out thanks to a winning performance by Marion Cotillard. To say that Piaf is “played” by Cotillard is to diminish what she gives to this film. She captures Piaf’s drunken charm and unforgettable wit but also manages to give depth and dimension in scenes that, effectively, rip your heart out. La Vie En Rose gives a portrait of the singer as a person. Piaf’s music and onstage persona never strayed far from her own life experiences. From the beginning, and then over and over again, Piaf is subject to some of life’s worst miseries. Cotillard’s Piaf wears them throughout the film. The nearly two-and-a-half hours of film may not suit everyone’s taste, especially given that it covers Piaf from childhood to death, but it certainly makes for interesting, engaging cinema. I was fortunate to see this film twice. It is rare for an audience to applaud after a film. So moved were audience members at the end of this film that they applauded—both times. This excellent film is now available on DVD as an ‘extended version.’ |
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