La Vie En Rose
Directed by Olivier Dahan
It’s early for Oscar baiting but Marion Cotillard’s performance as Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose puts itself on the hook. It also makes one assess the notable characterizations that highlight the movie year so far: Eddie Murphy in Norbit, Julie Christie in Away From Her, Rie Rasmussen in Angel-A, Diane Keaton in Because I Said So, Gerard Butler in 300, Derek Magyar in Boy Culture, Jamel Debbouze in Angel-A, Juliette Binoche in Paris, Je t’aime, Albert Finney in Amazing Grace, Lambert Wilson in Private Fears in Public Places. Not just a list, these are signposts of how human nature is creatively perceived by actors and filmmakers in the grip of fresh inspiration.
Cotillard’s Piaf is genuinely impressive. Cotillard goes through Piaf’s pathological shyness, her on-stage desperation, her constant vulnerability, her sexual passion, her aging and debilitation. But this showcase of phenomenal skill has to compensate for the movie’s totally unoriginal biopic framework. The American title, La Vie En Rose, replaces the original French title, La Môme (Piaf’s colloquial nickname); it not only domesticates the story but is truer to director Dahan’s hackneyed predictability. Dahan relies on all the Piaf clichés. And Cotillard dives into them: The way Diana Ross dived into Billie Holiday except Cotillard shows a trained actress’ craft. (Hard to believe this was the same actress limited to French chick clichés in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year).
Dahan chooses a structure that studies the miniscule events in Piaf’s life—he seems to be imitating the exhaustingly detailed Amélie: from deprived childhood to her sorrowful adolescence and the scrappy climb from street busking up the various levels of showbiz (with fortuitous aid from impresarios played by Pascal Greggory and Gerard Depardieu). But then there’s the big moment: capping the torch singer’s love affair with boxing champ Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins). Dahan’s flashback method builds up to Piaf’s mourning and here—matching a single, unbroken steadicam shot to Cotillard’s personal fireworks as she goes from room to room in grief and disbelief—is the film’s one true, triumphantly cinematic moment.
Altogether The Deluxe Piaf, but, alas, it’s not the best. Claude Lelouch’s 1983 Édith and Marcel (starring the extraordinarily flirtatious Evelyn Bouix) was a superior soufflé of history and legend, music and romance—another of Lelouch’s swirling, underappreciated masterworks. Cotillard may be the Piaf the Oscars salute, but Bouix is the Piaf to be remembered.
