Film Reviews

La Vie En Rose

• Rating:
• Director: Olivier Dahan.
• Starring: Marion Cotillard, Emmanuelle Seigner, Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Martins.
• Details: France / UK / Czech Republic / 140mins (15A).

One way to get the nod for an Oscar nomination is to star in a biopic when the lead is a tragic figure - and Marion Cotillard, who played Russell Crowe's love interest in Ridley Scott's A Good Year, is a shoe-in here, playing the legendary Edith Piaf. Piaf, who from meagre beginnings in a brothel would go on to be one of the most celebrated singers of all time, gets the actor she deserves, but not the story. Opening with her on-stage collapse in New York in 1959, director Olivier Dahan cuts back to 1918 to show Piaf as a sickly child, and La Vie En Rose takes on this style for its remainder: chopping and changing different timelines which culminate in the singing of her best known song 'Non, Je ne regrette rien (No Regrets)'. It's a different approach but it's not perfect by any means. Dahan tries to screw with the formula of the biopic (the troubled kid, the audience's realisation that they are in the presence of a genius, the slow downfall, the drugs, the grand finale) by documenting her rise to fame and fall from grace simultaneously; but this, at times, can be grating rather than original. Too many things are glossed over: Piaf's connection with club owner Leplee (Depardieu) - the man who first saw talent in Piaf - and his murder is brought up and then forgotten about, and WWII and the occupation of Paris whizzes by without a mention. There's nothing spectacular going on here except for Cotillard's performance. Cotillard is flawless as Piaf, playing her from the age of 14 to her untimely death at 48. Nailing her lumbering, ungraceful walk, her squeaky voice and the true love she finds in boxer Marcel Cerdan (Martins), Cotillard displays a wide range of emotions, sometimes even in the same scene. At 140 minutes, La Vie En Rose can be a long slog for a foreign film, but thankfully Dahan keeps the camera moving - resorting to handheld on more than one occasion - to give the running time some momentum.

Review by Gavin Burke