La Vie en Rose (2007)

Really Surprised!

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Better Late Then Never

A lot of fun.

This is a biopic of Édith Piaf (Marion Cotillard) told in a non-linear manner. The movie starts with her collapsing during a 1959 New York performance. She is a young girl crying in the streets of 1918 Paris. Her father is away at war and her singing mother abandons her. He returns home to take the sick Édith away to his mother who runs a brothel in Normandy. She is befriended by maternal hooker Titine. His father returns again to take her away to work in the circus. They quit the circus and she starts singing in the streets. Nightclub owner Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu) hires her giving her the name Piaf until his murder. This is a low point as the public turns against her and she is forced into a convent by her mother. Next, she is in post-war New York falling for boxer Marcel Cerdan. It is a troubled exuberant life of ups and downs.Marion Cotillard is incredibly powerful acting this wild life. She delivers on every point. It's a masterful performance. The movie itself is a long-running biopic. The story isn't able to distill into a simple idea. It's a lot of sections and vignettes. The most controversial and powerful should be her years in occupied Europe working under Nazi rule. Oddly, the movie seems to skip over that important part of her life. Maybe, there are uncomfortable rumors that the movie refuses to touch. Overall, Cotillard is so powerful that any problems fade into the background.

From 2007, La Vie en Rose is the story of the great Edith Piaf, a little woman with a huge voice, a huge soul, and huge eyes, who transcended her beginnings and became an international star.Marion Cotillard is Piaf, and what a magnificent job she does - ethereally beautiful in sections, she creates an unforgettable portrait of a woman who loved and sang and lived with great passion but in the end was her own worst enemy due to drugs and alcohol. Like so many people, she became addicted to painkillers after an accident, and both her parents are depicted as alcoholics. I can only describe the end of the film as shattering and heartbreaking due to Cotillard's fantastic acting.That's the performance - now to the movie. A life like Piaf's isn't easy to get into a couple of hours, even a couple of hours plus like this one, so events in her life are skipped or go by very quickly. Director Olivier Dahan moves from the end of Piaf's life to the beginning and the middle throughout, and in my opinion, he does it expertly. What's not so expert is the hurried way some of the incidents are presented, for instance, the murder of Leplee (Gérard Depardieu) - you would have to know Piaf's life to follow what happened in those scenes.Also, the reappearance of certain characters after many years had passed - one look at the message board tells you that many viewers didn't know who they were. I'm a complete snob and I admit it, so why people thought the older blond woman who approaches Piaf and raves about her work was Marilyn Monroe is beyond me. Okay, it wasn't the best Marlene Dietrich I've ever seen, but she had her hair like Dietrich's, she was obviously a mature woman, everyone is so reverential -- if you think people were reverential toward Marilyn Monroe like that in those days, think again.All in all, I found the film excellent, despite incidents and relationships (Yves Montand, and the fact that her best friend Momone was actually a half-sister) being omitted. I need to also add that Pauline Burlet, who was the 10-year-old Edith, was absolutely beautiful in the role.Highly recommended for the story and for Piaf's incredible voice, heard in most of the songs. Cotillard performs "Frou Frou" and Jil Aigrot does two numbers, the truncated "Padam" and "L'Accordéoniste."

What's the point of treating others with respect, no less yourself. Much like Robert DiNro in Raging Bull, Marion Cotillard recreates a character that will long remain in the souls of cinefiles and the public alike. The sad symbiotic tales of the characters flowing through the stream of Edith Piafs' life are captured as willing participants in the songstress' drunken existence. Still France adopted her as their soul and this experience is none the less remarkable and seeing the singer come to life by Cotillard makes this more than a one time viewing biopic. You can judge and sympathize at the same time but note only part of history is revealed in this long and choppy binge into the life of Edith Piaf.

La Vie en Rose is a great movie that portrays the life of singer Edith Piaf through her childhood and through the tragedies she faced around her as she grew up. The movie really gives life to the character of Edith, and I think that is especially achieved through Marion Cotillard, the actress playing Edith Piaf in the film. This is the best role I've seen from her, and perhaps one of the best roles from other female actresses. Her emotional acting is able to lead the audience of the movie through the difficult times that Edith felt in her life.The makeup was incredibly well done, as Marion Cotillard was made to look almost exactly like the real Edith Piaf. The makeup also was very well transitioned from Edith's early childhood years to her teenage years, and to adulthood.I also enjoyed the music in this movie, and I like the idea of for example, when Edith was going through a difficult time or a tragedy, in the background would be a song of hers that relates to what she is experiencing at the moment.Although I have stated many good comments about this film, it is a little depressing, though that is expected if you know the life of Edith Piaf. Overall, however, it was a really well-made movie with excellent acting from Marion Cotillard, and a powerful drama that brings to life the voice and heart of French singer Edith Piaf.