La Vie En Rose (aka La Môme)



I got this 2007 biopic movie about iconic French singer Edith Piaf on DVD because I was quite curious about Marion Cotillard and her performance in the title role.

Cotillard got the Academy Award for Best Actress, no questions asked, no debate, axiomatically. Usually the competition for that Oscar is blisteringly hot! Cotillard must have turned in just a killer performance to win the award hands-down! But I hadn't seen the movie in a theater....

And it is a dream role, really! Cotillard got to portray Edith Piaf from youth to a premature old age (caused by liver failure). The range of emotion is fatiguing. Overwhelming! At 5' 6", Cotillard is a bit tall for the role, but nevermind. Cotillard is especially adept at capturing Piaf's dislike of sunny rooms - close the drapes please! In an interview I remember seeing last year, Cotillard said that Edith Piaf feared solitude, but for some reason (probably because of the hallucinatory focus of parts of the film), that particular fear doesn't come through.

Here is the summary from imdb:

An un-chronological look at the life of the Little Sparrow, Édith Piaf (1915-1963). Her mother is an alcoholic street singer, her father a circus performer, her paternal grandmother a madam. During childhood she lives with each of them. At 20, she's a street singer discovered by a club owner who's soon murdered, coached by a musician who brings her to concert halls, and then quickly famous. Constant companions are alcohol and heartache. The tragedies of her love affair with Marcel Cerdan and the death of her only child belie the words of one of her signature songs, "Non, je ne regrette rien." The back and forth nature of the narrative suggests the patterns of memory and association.

The flashback sequences lend a hallucinatory quality to much of the movie. Quite interesting, particularly towards the end, when Piaf starts having - hallucinations!

And who is Cotillard?:

Marion Cotillard, who won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Édith Piaf in Môme, La (2007) (retitled "La Vie en Rose" in the United States), is the second actress to win an acting Oscar performing in a language other than English next to Sophia Loren who won for Ciociara, La (1960). Only two male performers (Roberto Benigni for La Vita e Bella and Robert DeNiro for The Godfather, Part II) have won an Oscar for solely non-English parts.

A Libran born in Paris on September 30, 1975, Cotillard is the daughter of Jean-Claude Cotillard, an actor, playwright and director, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. Raised in Orléans, France, she made her acting debut as a child with a role in one of her father's plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orléans.

While still a teenager, Cotillard made her cinema debut in the film Histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse, L' (1994). Her first prominent screen role was as Lilly Bertineau in Taxi (1998/I), a role which she reprised in two sequels. Director Olivier Dahan cast Cotillard to play Édith Piaf, the legendary French singer, in "La Môme" because to him her eyes were like those of Piaf. The fact that she can sing also helped Cotillard land the role of Piaf, although most of the singing in the film is that of Piaf's.

Her turn as Piaf brought Cotillard the Oscar, the César (France's equivalent to the Oscar), a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe among other prices. Trevor Nunn called her portrayal of Piaf "one of the greatest performances on film ever". At the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Cotillard was given a 15-minute standing ovation.

One very strange thing about the movie, however. There is no mention of World War II in the film. A biography of Edith Piaf without mentioning World War II is sort of like a biography of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning the Civil War. Clearly the movie is intended to capture Piaf's internal personal life, much of which was tumultuous. Her external personal life was just as tumultuous too, but perhaps they need a second movie to capture that!