"La Vie En Rose" (Language - French) (2007) - Movie Review

Musical icons often have a tragic personal life. Most of them depress over their abundance of attention which soon becomes from a delicacy to something irritably caustic. The zest in their talent and the sudden control of events push them to embrace more than they can handle at one go. At its pace the suffocation begins and if missed for good friends and self realization, the life turns living hell. Such is the borderline case given in the biopic of singer Edith Piaf. There is art in this film but there is search for some thing else which we never get.

The film presented as fragments of memories of Piaf (Marion Cotillard) arbitrates in different life periods of the singer. I have not known about Piaf until this film. Brought up among the streets when her mother has little concern about the well being of Piaf and she sings leaving her unattended. The talent Piaf will be inheriting very soon and making her life through it gaining recognition. Taken away by her father (Jean-Paul Rouve) he leaves her with his mother (Clotilde Courau) who runs a brothel. She lands from being a waif to being among prostitutes who shower love, especially Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner). But soon does her father return and take her to the dungeons of streets there on we see how her life is a roller coaster with a constant hunt for something she never finds in her existence.

The non-linear technique in giving her life provides a great deal of story telling, at least for half of the time in the film. Its construction is particularly good at the beginning when we see very little difference in the change of behavioral aspects Ms. Piaf exhibits. We see her as an obnoxious, cranky and insolent lost person in both the cases. Her talent is phenomenal as on how such a strong and enigmatic voice is been generated from a puny body. There are people around her most of the times and there are key people who shape her singing career but even the closest acquaintance she manages to get are farther away from her personality. She is adamant, immature and clueless for whom singing is not only a passion but her only identification in the world. This makes her go limitless to stretch beyond boundaries. She is self destructive and the upbringing forms the major part of the reason.

As much as the powerful performance of Marion Cotillard projects this courageous and outspoken personality, as we see the last few days of Edith, we neither have sympathy nor have we understood her at all. The two hour and twenty minute movie makes us feel tired in a good way but everything is a hazy experience in the end. The impatience created by the film at various intervals does get anchored by key scenes and at the same time we get annoyed by the vacuum created by a dragging screenplay.

When the nominations for the Academy Award for 2007 were announced, the biggest shock is Cate Blanchett being nominated for Best Actress in her Queen Elizabeth role in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”. While her acting is appreciable the film is a terrible disaster and it gave me bad feeling of some one being nominated for their role in a bad movie. In that thought, if there is a superior performance in a bad movie, does it qualify for award? And I swallowed my own thought as it is more difficult to outshine the failure of film into a great performance. Even in that aspect Cate Blanchett’s performance does not substantiate the nomination but Cotillard’s deserves to win the award.

It is a film which appears to be great but only remain as a flimsy glimpse of thought than an established fact of beauty and tragedy of Piaf with her voice. The award winning performance of Cotillard is thus a perplex emotion in looking at the film. She gives the singer whom many of this generation might have not known and her enactment of her is honestly realistic. I may not have witnessed the great singer’s mannerisms but without that we can see the originality in Cotillard’s Piaf.

Director Oliver Dahan gives a glossy confusion. Piaf’s existence appears to be given with everything at the moment but soon we forget what happened. The retentivity of the story is weak and in a biopic it is a crucial part to stay with us. The reason for the biopic that gets completely dropped off as the story of Edith Piaf is told in “La Vie En Rose”. Hence we enjoy the scenes for the moment of it but at the end, our patience is lost and so does the story.