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Standard Music Biopic I have heard snippets of Edith Piaf singing on occasion but have never really found myself drawn to her voice or style. It always sounded to my untrained ear like she was working very hard to enunciate every word at the expense of any emotion. But she is an icon to the French, so it was probably inevitable someone would one day make a biopic based on her life. That film is "La Vie En Rose" starring Marion Cotillard and directed by Olivier Dahan. Edith Piaf, the daughter or a singer and a circus acrobat, is left with her grandmother in the war-torn French countryside in 1917. Her father, on leave from the frontline, returns home and finds Edith sick and dirty, so he takes her to live with his mother, a madam, in her brothel in Normandy. There, she meets Titine (Emmanuel Seigner, "The Ninth Gate"), a prostitute who helps to nurse Edith back to health and becomes abnormally attached to the little girl. At times she seems to think she is a play doll, at others, her actual daughter. After the war, her father returns and they move out. Her father soon leaves the circus and starts performing on the street. One day, he urges Edith to do something, anything to hold the attention of the crowd and she starts to sing. Her singing captivates the crowd and they throw coins into the collection purse. She earns a few engagements singing in run down dives and then meets a new mentor. He takes her in and hires Marguerite (Marie-Armelle Deguy) to act as an accompanist. They practice and practice and practice. With each word, the mentor stops them and they start again. He continues to admonish her; enunciate each word and sing with your hands. Soon, she appears at a large music hall. Initially, stage fright grips her, but she is eventually able to overcome this and captivate the audience. "La Vie En Rose" is fairly standard as far as movie biopics go, with one exception. It uses a standard formula to depict the subject's life, guiding us along the path of their life, depicting the most interesting twists and turns. It is even a more standard depiction of a singer. We have seen this type of story before. A bad childhood leads the person in question to become a determined star, always striving to be the best she can be, always desiring to spend as much time on stage as possible. When bad things happen, the subject perseveres, perhaps making her even stronger. On occasion, these moments make them weaker. Every challenge leads to a new song in their repertoire of classics. This is the formula a lot of biopics follow and we know it well. When we such a standard method of storytelling, we begin to hope, to expect that something else will help to compensate for the pedestrian nature of the project. Dahan also uses another familiar technique. We flash back and forward throughout Piaf's life. One moment, we see her on stage in New York City, late in her life, and she is about to sing in front of an audience. Then, we flash back to her childhood, presumably watching her memories as she prepares to go on stage. Then, we flash forward to Piaf, later in life, as she deals with her failing health. This allows the filmmakers to present the subject in an introspective light. If Piaf is on her deathbed, and remembering back to key points in her life, perhaps she is a sympathetic person. This technique is usually reserved for people who were 'difficult' in their lives. Piaf fits this label. She treats the people around her, her closest advisors, as helpers, servants. Everything is Piaf's life is about singing and singing well. If people who are helping her achieve these goals don't understand that, they can leave. She rants and raves at more than one of her trusted aides on more than one occasion. There is only one time in the film when she truly appears to be nice and that is when she falls in love. The rest of the time, she is one extreme emotion after another. Because of this, she doesn't come off as very nice and we don't have a lot of sympathy for her. Dahan seems to recognize this and tries to create sympathy for her by showing how frail and sickly she is later in her life. The film has a definite rhythm. A snippet of Piaf's life is followed by a moment of reflection later in her life. Then we get a song. The songs are used to punctuate her life story, to underscore the emotions she is feeling at a particular point. Late in the film, and her life, as Piaf is preparing to perform after a long absence, she meets two songwriters who sing a song for her. She immediately latches onto the lyrics because they form a sort of synopsis of what she is feeling at that point in her life. This is the most overt example of this technique, but it helps to illustrate the feel of the film. It won't fit. Please read the full review at thornhillatthemovies.com. email this review to a friend
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