LA VIE EN ROSE ("LA MOME")
No Regrets For A Vibrant Life Lived By A Tragic Legend
The Popcorn Reel Movie Review: "La Vie En Rose" (aka "La Mome")
By Omar P.L. Moore/June 6, 2007
Sylvie Testud (as Momone) in the background of this photo, and Marion
Cotillard as the legendary and tragic singer Edith Piaf, in Olivier Dahan's "La
Vie En Rose" ("La Mome".) The film opens exclusively in San Francisco on
Friday, June 8, and opens in select American cities a week later, expanding
further thereafter. (Photo: Picturehouse)
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"La Mome" (the original French title) or "La Vie En Rose", is a triumphant
convergence of acting, direction and music via filmmaker Olivier Dahan.
The biopic (although Mr. Dahan would probably prefer people not characterize his
film as such) showcases arguably the new century's greatest cinematic
performance. If Forest Whitaker electrified audiences last year as Idi
Amin in "The Last King Of Scotland", then Marion Cotillard astounds audiences in
an incomprehensible fashion. Cotillard, the French actor who plays that
country's "Little Sparrow" singer Edith Piaf (who at 47 died far too early)
delivers in every way. She is so good as Piaf and of eerie verisimilitude
that it is shocking, even frightening. Cotillard acts her heart and soul
out, giving Piaf a gravitas, power and vulnerability that sends chills down
one's spine. When Cotillard-as-Piaf sings before the adoring throngs she
is as naked as can be, yet as commanding as ever. (Cotillard was last seen
in the U.S. as a waitress opposite Russell Crowe in the 2006 film "A Good
Year.") But special credit for this remarkable tour-de-force acting goes
to the film's make-up team, who are almost every bit as responsible for one of
film's historic acting turns as Cotillard herself is.
The film flashes backward and forward, showing us fragments of Piaf's life, as
an impoverished little girl with a harsh mother and absent father, then
performing on stage nearer the end of her career in the early 1960's and then to assorted
out-of-sequence events in the early 1930's. But these reversed chronologies and disjointed
sequences aren't troublesome to the film in any way, shape or form. Dahan
plays these scenes as fragments of a tormented life stricken with one heartbreak
after another, with joie de vivre firmly stamped on the places that tragedy
couldn't reach. Piaf lived her life in a frenzied way, and the suddenness
of the events in her life are mirrored by both the visual and narrative style of
Mr. Dahan's film. As mentioned earlier, the director wouldn't call "La
Mome" a biopic -- and in sincerity it is not -- as the famous affairs Piaf had
with Marlene Dietrich (briefly glimpsed in the guise of Caroline Sihol), Yves
Montand and several others are barely hinted at. A romance with Marcel Cerdan, the famed boxer from the-then French colony of Algeria in Northern
Africa, is chronicled in more detail however, and with a heartbreaking
denouement.
The detractors of Mr. Dahan's film will say that "La Vie En Rose" rings hollow
and incomplete, but such criticisms fail to appreciate the essence of Piaf,
which the director captures so very well here. He wisely chooses to
minimize the more scandalous and controversial aspects of Edith Piaf's life in
order to stick with the fundamentals of that life. "La Vie En Rose"
screened last month at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it
will open on Friday, June 8, and expand around the U.S. in subsequent weeks.
The techniques Dahan uses in some breathtaking shots more than adequately
substitute for the banality or emptiness of words. Tried-and-true
directors may have gone for close-ups of Piaf singing, but here there are shots
of the audience in a couple of scenes that are exquisitely choreographed by
cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata. These music score-only sequences lift
something within the viewer -- it's as if we feel Piaf's wordless voice floating
over the onscreen audience entrancing it into admiration -- and floating into
our own hearts. Mr. Nagata also opts for shots of Cotillard from behind
and in silhouette. Mr. Nagata's photo work captures the grit, the
loneliness, the adulation, the sorrow and the sanguine.
An all-star cast joins Cotillard, including the legendary Gerard Depardieu as
Louis Leplee, who discovered the young Piaf, as well as Sylvie Testud as
long-time Piaf friend and intimate Momone, Emmanuelle Seigner as Titine, the
great Pascale Greggory as Louis Barrier, and Jean-Paul Rouve as Louis Gassion.
Jean-Pierre Martins plays Marcel Cerdan. They are all phenomenal.
Much of the final portion of the third act visits the harsher parts of Piaf's
life, but even those are sprinkled with intermittent sunshine, such as her trip
to California, and an interview with a budding journalist in the same American
state.
Every bit of this film is grand, glorious and mesmerizing. Piaf's music is
indescribable, and despite the use of adjectives in this review, Olivier Dahan's
movie is much the same. A special work. Even at two hours and 20
minutes, it is wonderfully sustaining and never dull.
In 2008, Marion Cotillard will meet Oscar -- guaranteed.
"La Vie En Rose" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association of America for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity,
language and thematic elements. The film's duration is two hours and 20
minutes, and opens on Friday exclusively in San Francisco before branching out
to other American cities.
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