Web posted
August 2, 2007
A great performance fuels biopic of doomed singer
Cotillard does nothing to regret in film about the famed Little Sparrow
By Christy Lemire
The Associated Press
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| Courtesy of Picturehouse |
 Portrait of a songbird: Marion Cotillard, right, plays the role of doomed French songstress Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose." Sylvie Testud, left, plays Momone. |
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Edith Piaf lived fast and died young, but she didn't exactly leave a good-looking corpse.
At 47, she looked closer to 67, her tiny body ravaged by the effects of longtime alcohol abuse, morphine addiction and, ultimately, cancer.
The fact that Marion Cotillard deeply immerses herself in the role of the doomed French songstress, making you forget you're watching a beautiful actress, is only part of what makes her performance in "La Vie en Rose" great.
Cotillard, plays various stages of the Little Sparrow's life: as a 19-year-old being discovered singing on street corners, as a mercurial star at the height of her powers, and as a frail, demanding shell of herself on her deathbed. It's almost as if she's been asked to play three roles, all of which she accomplishes convincingly and with striking intensity.
It's the acting that elevates the story beyond its biopic trappings. Although director and co-writer Olivier Dahan tries to invigorate the genre by jumping around in time, the telling of this extraordinary life still seems a bit too familiar. It can be an intoxicating, dreamlike jumble, but at two hours and 20 minutes, the melodrama also is physically draining.
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Movie Review
'La Vie En Rose'
Rating: 2 Stars
Staring: Marion Cotillard, Gerard Depardieu, Slyvie Testud, Clotilde Courau and Jean Paule Rouve.
Director: Oliver Dahan
Parent's Guide: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 20 mins.
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In re-creating a famous person's life, too often this kind of film feels like a greatest-hits collection of key events. There's the first time she sings in public as a child, her street-performer father (Jean-Paul Rouve) prodding her to help him make money from a crowd that's gathered. The moment when nightclub owner Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu) hears her on the corner, recognizes her raw talent and puts her on his stage. (He also coined her nickname.) There's her first concert-hall performance. Her first world tour. The moment she collapses on stage in front of an audience in New York. And the moment she first hears what would become her defining, defiant anthem, "Non, je ne regrette rien," or "I regret nothing."
Cotillard, her hairline shaved back and her eyebrows thinly penciled in, doesn't try to mimic Piaf - she's lip-syncing, which was a smart move. No one could have matched Piaf's power, but Cotillard does give us a sense of her volatility, her neediness and her yearning to be loved. (This helps explain her visceral reaction to the plane-crash death of her great love, boxer Marcel Cerdan, played by Jean-Pierre Martins. Dahan goes a bit over the top at this point.)
So after all these highs and lows, all this skipping around across continents and through decades, do we understand what drove this famous figure any better than when wewalked in? Not really. Butwe've witnessed one hell of a performance.
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