La Vie en Rose (Extended Version)

الوصف

Product Description She was known as "the Little Sparrow." But behind Edith Piaf's tiny stature was a larger-than-life voice that captivated a generation. Featuring a powerhouse, Oscar(R)-winning lead performance by Marion Cotillard, this sensational film unveils the story of the French songbird whose road to international fame became suffused with poverty, illness, heartbreak, tragedy and addiction. "Four stars...one of the best biopics I've seen" (Roger Ebert). Winner of two Academy Awards(R), for Best Actress (Cotillard) and Best Makeup. Co-starring Emmanuelle Seigner, Jean-Paul Rouve, Gerard Depardieu and Clotilde Courau. Directed by Olivier Dahan; adaptation and dialogues by Olivier and Isabelle Sobelman, screenplay by Olivier Dahan. desertcart.com Edith Piaf is the subject of La Vie en Rose, director Olivier Dahan's powerful if emotionally redundant biographical film about the iconic French superstar whose life, as depicted here, seems to have been a numbing succession of tragedies interrupted on occasion by artistic triumph. Dahan's portrait begins with Piaf's stay in a brothel as a young girl. Left to the care of her grandmother (who runs the place) after her father pulls her away from a narcissistic mother, Piaf undergoes significant health problems and grows up to sing on the street in lieu of outright prostitution. The film pulses along with the usual biopic rhythms, with pivotal moments in the life of Piaf (played as an adult by Marion Cotillard) turning up regularly only to be smacked aside by the unseen hand of perpetual misfortune. There's the impresario (Gerard Depardieu) who recognizes Piaf's great but raw talent only to have a run-in with the criminal element around her. There's the heavyweight fighter (Marcel Cerdan) who becomes the love of Piaf's life but can't be with her. Drug addiction, random car accidents, tax problems, you name it, it's all here, topped by an unnerving revelation that pops up in La Vie en Rose's final moments. After awhile, with such a concentration of bad news squeezed into 140 minutes, one begins to wish Dahan had taken a more expansive approach to Piaf's life and times. But the film is never less than interesting, and the lead performance by Cotillard is often astonishing. --Tom Keogh Review: Get out your accordion and a bottle of French wine. - Beautiful film, thoughtfully structured. Normally multiple flashbacks are a huge red flag, but in this case it works. Ms. Cotillard is astonishing, downplaying her own beauty and disappearing into Piaf. The shoot must have been physically and psychically brutal. The only flaws with the story are not the film makers' particular fault. One, Piaf has no arc (outside of her career). She was a reactive person by nature and remained so through-out her life. They try to give her a sense of peace and reflection in a scene on a California beach but it is one of the few scenes that rings hollow. The other (minor) issue is obviously this is a French film and the makers tend to assume that a French audience will mostly know the (tragic) beats of her story, such is her status in the pantheon. For an American audience, however, this is problematic. Piaf's daughter is introduced by her childhood death by meningitis. It is horrible, but less horrible than it might have been had we known she even had a daughter by a husband we had just met. Also WW2 is skipped over with one throw away scene where she meets a soldier leaving for the front. Her affair with Cerdan, however, is wonderfully done, handled with both substance and great delicacy. His death tears your heart out - even if you know it is coming. The actor who plays Cerdan is credible as both the man and the boxer. I'm sure most Americans don't know France ever had a serious boxer, much less a world champion, but it is true. A fine, fine portrayal. Finally, the music. I am no musicologist so I am not going to comment on that, but her performances and songs will outlive all of us, and the film is both generous and clever in handling the music. This is what they used to call a twenty hankie movie, and it is all of that. Preparez vos mouchoirs, as they say. A couple of interesting points: Claude Lelouch made 'Edith and Marcel' in '83 casting Cerdan's real son as his father. I'm not going to comment until I can go back and screen it again, it's been too many years, but it is probably worth digging up. Finally, a film about Cerdan starring Patrick Dewaere was in production when Dewaere committed suicide, the awful loss of a wonderful young actor. Review: Incredible Transformation by an Actress - I had to go back and see this film a second time in order to be certain that I had seen the performance that I had seen. Marianne Cotillard (sp?), who is actually very beautiful and somewhat tall and thin, WAS Edith Piaf in this film. Whoever Edith Piaf was. And therein lies a tale, because there are so many contradictory stories about her, including those from her, from her so-called "sister", from friends, from reviewers. I had to go and read all of the bios that I could find about Piaf, and it was amazing how different they all were. Even Edith herself wrote two different auto-bios and they were quite different from each other. But the movie draws you in and claims you for the entirety of the film. And there is no question it is due to the performance. The film itself is not great, but the performance is breathtaking. I have now seen it three times and have, of course, pre-ordered the DVD. But for those who love film, who love actors, who love brilliance, I strongly recommend that they sit back and enjoy this unusual, wonderful, inhabited performance. Jan Schulman