La Vie en Rose
Director: Olivier Dahan. Screenplay: Olivier Dahan, Isabelle Sobelman. Cinematography: Tetsuo Nagata. Film editing: Richard Marizy. Production design: Olivier Raoux. Music: Christopher Gunning. Producer: Alain Goldman. With: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner, Jean-Paul Rouve, Gérard Depardieu, Clotilde Courau, Jean-Pierre Martins, Catherine Allégret, Marc Barbé, Caroline Sihol, Manon Chevallier, Pauline Burlet, Elisabeth Commelin, Marc Gannot. France/UK/Czech Republic. In French. 118 min. Original title: La Môme. 2007.
It’s an odd challenge for a filmmaker to face, but the actual life of legendary French singer Édith Piaf reads like a string of biopic clichés—rotten childhood, debilitating illness, untimely deaths of a very young daughter and a deeply cherished lover, addictions to drugs and booze, onstage triumphs undercut by offstage tribulations, and early death at 47 years old. How do you tell this story without seeming trite and unoriginal?
To his great credit, filmmaker Dahan resists the temptation to wring tear-jerking sentimentality from the material; instead he takes a quasi-Brechtian approach, breaking the story into smartly juxtaposed segments that leap through time and space as effortlessly as Piaf mesmerizes spellbound listeners with her astonishingly expressive voice. Dahan also found the perfect actress to play the Little Sparrow, as admirers called her: Cotillard, who makes Piaf a living, breathing presence in every phase of her adult life, from her early trials as a down-and-out street singer to her years of international fame and her eventual decline into loneliness, infirmity, and—despite the lyrics of “Non, je ne regrette rien,” one of her greatest hits—regret for a million might-have-beens.
Although it clocks in at two hours and twenty minutes, this is one of the rare movies that should really be longer; another couple of reels would have allowed Dahan to pursue such fascinating threads as Piaf’s work with the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation and her late-in-life marriage to a much younger man who stuck with her until death did them part. But these are quibbles with an excellent picture that gains even more power from pitch-perfect uses of Piaf’s own singing on the soundtrack. Kudos all around, but especially to Cotillard, whose savvy balance of celebrity impersonation and psychological insight sets a lofty new standard for movie-biography acting.
– David Sterritt
