La Vie en Rose

Backstage, an old Edith Piaf stands, preparing for one of her final performances. Her torso is wrapped, and her doctor tells her that she is risking her life if she goes on with her performance. “So?” she responds. “You have to risk something.”

One would not think much of Marion Cotillard’s looks if they only saw her in the roles she takes. Outside of the movies she is gorgeous, but here, in ‘La Vie en Rose,’ she shaved her eyebrows and reduced her hairline to become Edith Piaf -- and that is only the beginning of the transformation.

The movie takes place around three stages in Edith’s life. The first is of her as a child, and this is one of the few movies, biopic or not, that has successfully managed to evoke sympathy for a character within the first twenty minutes. Practically orphaned, Edith suffers to the point where she may become blind. She goes to pray, blindfolded, to Saint Theresa and Jesus, so that she may have sight and be able to read like the rest of the children.

But this is a few of the only words Edith says during her childhood, until her father steals her from the brothel she was being raised in so he can use her in his circus act. Which is a better home, a whorehouse or a circus cart? One could have a tough time making that decision. Her father has her on the sidewalk holding out a hat, begging for change as he does cheap acrobatics, until the crowd wants Edith herself to do something. What does she do? Oh, she sings.

Time passes, and Marion Cotillard comes out as a teenager who sings on the streets for change, to which she has to give her father a cut as he wastes his life away in a pub. Edith’s luck comes and goes in a rollercoaster of successes and failures. One day she is drinking champagne at a New Years’ party, the next she is a step from having to whore herself out for food money. There is no doubt, in this stage of her life, that she lives for the moment -- whether good or bad.

A third chunk of the movie’s time line is the elder Edith Piaf, one who cannot pick up a glass without her hand shaking furiously. But her determination is possibly the strongest of any character in a movie I’ve seen in a long time. She is the lady who holds her friends close, but everything is second to her love of music. She became a national treasure for France, and she worked hard to uphold that image.

These three time lines are intertwined throughout the movie’s 140 minute run-time. The director, Olivier Dahan, manages to piece these events together in a way that nothing is spoiled and each chunk makes the next that much more important, regardless of how it happened chronologically. This is not a movie of stages of life, but of the events that shape a person.

The real achievement in this movie is Marion Cotillard herself. She plays Edith Paif with such vigor, yet in her face you can always see that behind her eyes she has worries and desperation, but that tiny smile she gives with her bright red lips is just enough so you also know she is full of love, whether she is singing, drinking, or praying. If this isn’t an Oscar-worthy performance, I don’t know what is.

And how can one ignore the music in a biopic about a singing legend? I think my reaction to this movie says enough: Starting the movie, I was familiar with La Vie en Rose as a song. As the movie played, and ended, the next thing I did was look for a soundtrack. It is a rare thing when the singing in a movie, even of a country’s national anthem, can take over one so completely. This is the movie that does it.

I’ve seen a number of biopics, a number of which have been about musical legends. ‘La Vie en Rose’ tops any I can think of at the moment, in acting, composition, art direction, and just plain, good old-fashioned storytelling.

Rating: 7/7

La Vie en Rose is now out on DVD.