Starring: Marion Cotillard
Director: Olivier Dahan
Rated: M
LA VIE EN ROSE. Starring Marion Cotillard. Directed by Olivier Dahan. Rated M (moderate themes, infrequent moderate coarse language), 130 minutes.
LA Vie en Rose and Je Ne Regrette Rien are two of the 20th centuries most popular songs, made famous by chanteuse, Edith Piaf.
There was a film biography of Piaf, with that title, in the 1970s.
Now there is a full scale biopic which opened the 2007 Berlin Film Festival and has broken box-office records in France.
Piaf is a French national figure.
Her life illustrates very powerfully the rags to riches archetypal story. It also illustrates that fame is not the be all and end all of life.
The film is worth seeing for Marion Cotillard’s performance as Piaf.
It is far more than an impersonation (though she looks and moves like Piaf). Rather, she has entered into the psyche of Piaf, a strange psyche indeed, and brought her to life again.
Marion Cotillard appeared in Big Fish and A Good Year and one would not have anticipated such a tour-de-force from her.
However, while audiences will enjoy the film very much, it has a great drawback in its structure.
The idea of running two phases of Piaf’s life in parallel is quite a good idea.
However, the way it is done here is often confusing (to say the least).
We are following, in linear fashion, Piaf’s early life and struggles. At the same time, we have moved to her final years, from 1959 to 1963 when she died.
The main difficulty is that within this period we move backwards and forwards, which seems unnecessary and is not a particularly illuminating device.
Having noted that, we can sit back and take in and enjoy what’s there.
Edith Piaf did not have an easy life when she was young.
Her mother wanted to be a singer and took her daughter on to the streets busking. Her father was away at the war.
When her mother abandoned her, she found herself in a brothel.
The writer-director, Olivier Dahan, creates a sympathetic fictitious character, played well by Emmanuelle Seigner, a prostitute who acts as a mother-figure to the little girl before she is taken back by her father.
As she grows up, Edith sings in the streets, accompanied by her drinking friend that she relies on (Sylvie Testud) – and they both can drink, and more.
Spotted by a cabaret owner (it is the mid-1930s by this) (Gerard Depardieu), she is hired and, despite initial nerves, is a great success and becomes the toast of Paris.
However, her past is always there to dog her. The owner is murdered in a gangster feud and her name is tarnished.
This only makes her stronger and, with records and performances, and the stern tuition of poet and songwriter, Raymond Asso, she never looks back.
It is surprising to find how, after the war, she spent so much time in the United States, performing, falling in love with a Moroccan boxer, marrying, developing a more autocratic manner, playing the star, roughriding over managers and assistants until a collapse in 1959 which led to her semi-retirement despite an intense desire to perform.
It was at this time that Je Ne Regrette Rien was written for her. She saw it as a summary of her life.
This is a very classy biopic with some fine performances and a mesmerising turn by Marion Cotillard.
At the end, we feel that we have really learned something about Edith Piaf, her personality and her times.
