France’s Little Sparrow, Edith Piaf, gets a warts-and-all film biography with Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose (also known as La Môme).
The Production: 3.5/5
France’s Little Sparrow, Edith Piaf, gets a warts-and-all biography with Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose (also known as La Môme). From a wretched childhood through triumphs and tragedies (the latter more pronounced than the former) in Europe and America, the wraith-like Piaf endures rather than lives life, and the film proves an endurance test for the audience, too: beautifully crafted and exquisitely performed but as dark and dispiriting as the haunted vocalist at its center.
From the unforgiving and dangerous streets of the Belleville district in Paris to the triumphant concert halls of New York, Paris, and California, Edith Piaf’s life was a constant battle to survive by singing her truths, to live and love in a world that seemed pitted against her. Raised in her grandmother’s (Catherine Allegre) brothel, Piaf was discovered singing in the streets in 1935 by nightclub owner Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu), who gives her the surname Piaf and offers the first stability in her turbulent life. From her cabaret debut, other professionals come calling as Piaf gains manager Louis Barrier (Pascal Greggory) and her fame grows exponentially. Love comes by way of boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins) on the verge of becoming the middleweight champion, but success in life and love has a way of remaining fleeting as Piaf’s fragile health and indulgent love of alcohol eventually leads to a morphine addiction and more performance failures than successes.
Director Olivier Dahan has written the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman, but the duo has chosen a non-linear approach to their narrative. We begin in 1959 as Piaf collapses on stage during a concert and immediately begin a series of flashbacks and flashforwards hitting the highlights of her troubled, turbulent life. While the changes in Piaf’s appearance (kudos to Oscar-winning makeup and hairstyling) and manner help us navigate this mélange of puzzle-piece sequences, it’s not often a satisfying motif for the viewer having to work this hard to reassemble a life story from the assorted bits and pieces we’re offered. Though Piaf was a renowned and very individualistic vocalist and a difficult person once her vices came to the fore, the film is not primarily a musical. We see a few songs sung diegetically (including her final triumph at the Olympia singing “Non-Je Ne Regrette Rien,” but many more are used as background score for other events. Director Dahan triumphs in two primary segments using this motif: Piaf’s first concert hall success shot silently as the camera cuts from the onstage singer to the audience being captured by her art and the Tony Zale-Marcel Cerdan championship fight where the intense action is accompanied by Piaf’s “L’Hymne À l’Amour.” One questions, however, a later fantasy scene as Piaf imagines Marcel flying in from France and greeting her at breakfast only to learn she’s actually about to have the shock of her life in learning the truth of his fate. It seems an ineffective way to deliver another gut punch to the fragile songbird.
Though Marion Cotillard only sang a tiny bit of her role with the majority of the Piaf vocals handled by dubber Jil Aigrot and some actual Piaf recordings, you’d be hard pressed not to believe that she’s handling all of the speaking and singing. A foot taller than the actual diminutive Piaf and with her voice husky and brusque, Cotillard hunches and shambles to lower her height and offers an unbelievably realistic representation of the inimitable star, winning the Best Actress awards from BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the Oscars in the process. Supporting turns are superlative as well with Jean-Paul Rouve excellent as her wayward father Louis Gassion, Emmanuelle Seigner triumphing as prostitute Titine who takes the five-year old Edith under her care, Catherine Allegre superb as the brothel madame who first resents Edith’s presence and then learns to care about her, Gerard Depardieu solid as the fatherly Louis Leplee, Marc Barbe terrific as Piaf’s long-suffering agent Raymond Asso, and Jean-Pierre Martins wonderful as the swarthy but loving Marcel Cerdan. Manon Chevallier and Pauline Burlet (with Cassandre Berger’s singing voice) are astonishingly believable younger versions of the Little Sparrow.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1 is faithfully rendered in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. It’s an exquisite rendering of the film capturing the atmosphere of its varying locales beautifully and with accurate color representation and very believable skin tones. There are no problems with scratches, dirt, or other visual anomalies. The movie has been divided into 35 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound mix offers an expansive aural experience when the situation is appropriate for it with music and sound effects spread in the front and rears and certain specific sounds guided to individual speakers most expertly. Dialogue and song lyrics mostly reside in the center channel though when the songs are used as background atmosphere, they’re spread throughout the soundstage. It’s a very effective sound experience.
Special Features: 2/5
Stepping into Character (7:18, SD): production featurette with director Olivier Dahan and star Marion Cotillard discussing their approach to portraying the legendary Edith Piaf on the screen.
Theatrical Trailer (2:04, SD)
Song Selection Menu: instant access to fourteen musical moments in the movie.
Overall: 3.5/5
There is much to like in Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose, but some may find themselves offput by the overall dour story, Piaf’s very individual style as a singer, and the film’s disjointed method of storytelling. The Blu-ray release, however, is aces.
Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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