La Vie En Rose (la Mome)
(NC16)- Release Date: 26th July 2007 (Showtimes)
- Language: French
- Running Time: 140 mins
- Genre: Drama
- Director: Olivier Dahan
- Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Seigner, Sylvie Testud, Jean-Pierre Martins, Marion Cotillard. (Full Cast)
- Local Distributor: Cathay-Keris Films
Edith Gassion is born in Bellevue to a life of dejection and poverty and seems doomed to live it till her dying day. Yet, somewhere between all the scurrying about, the abuse, the mud and the market, she finds herself singing La Marseillaise to a street crowd and announces herself to the world that a star is born. Spotted by Louis the cabaret manager, she earns the nickname piaf, meaning sparrow, and she begins to pull herself up into the glitzy domain of Parisian socialites but the trappings of fame would serve to damage her capacity to perform to the waiting world. Are talent, love and pain the same things spelt differently for different people? From the womb to the tomb, it seems that Edith was always fighting for something but just like in her song "Non, je ne regrette rien" -she regrets nothing.
Latest Review
Transcendent performance by Cotillard
What I loved most: Marion Cotillard
What I really hated: Editing/Scene juxtaposition that quickly becomes tedious
As you've no doubt heard by now, this film rides on an amazing performance from Cotillard. She manages to convince you she is dealing cards from an interior perspective while she nails all the expected outward mannerisms and posturing. It is a performance in the 'grand' manner of the kind they really don't put across anymore, as it is almost impossible these days to defy and exploit conventions at the same go without devolving into caricature or relying on ironic reference. The role is a sink hole, the life of Piaf and her hard as knocks attitude towards it is already the well-documented stuff of lore. And yet Cotillard pulls it off. She takes the archetypal Joan Crawford role, plays it as might Fernanda Montenegro and floors us all. One is at all times aware, from an instinctual level, that it is a performance, how could it no be? but one doesn't really care, the immersion is that complete. Otherwise the film is a bit of a fluffer and "put together" as if the director is trying very hard to transcend the bio-pic genre by assembling a picture with of non-linear narrative. It is too long by half an hour. The scene cutting and splicing of events from different periods in Piaf's life becomes tedious but does manage to highlight the full arc of transformation, in appearance, voice, posture, etc., that Cotillard undergoes. It is her role and she is astonishing, so much so that when a too contemporary Depardieu or an under-whelming Dietrich impersonator makes an entrance, for example, the point is underscored once again - Cotillard makes it look as if she is inhabiting the personnage, the other actors are sent up as performers in her presence.
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4