La Vie En Rose

Non, je ne regrette rien.

The short life of Edith Giovanna Gassion was a tragic one.  Born in Paris in 1915, she would endure a tumultuous childhood, largely in a brothel, to become one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century.   Along the way, she became "Edith Piaf", named by Louis Leplee, a nightclub owner who recognized her enormous talent and offered her a job.  Bad things happen, and she would later be reduced to cabaret performances before finally learning proper technique from the musician Raymond Asso, and becoming an international concert hall grande dame.  But at seeming every stage of her life, Edith was confronted with misfortune.  Her experiences, at least based on what is on view in the 2007 biopic LA VIE EN ROSE, will play perhaps like a dimestore paperback.  Or Hollywood melodrama.  Wayward  parents. Drugs.  Alcohol. Affairs. Severed friendships.  Merde! Maybe Edith's days weren't much different than that of many of us.

Co-writer/director Olivier Dahan takes a different approach by recounting events in a non-linear fashion.  His film jumps all over Edith's timeline, sometimes jarringly.  It was a bit dramatically dissatisfying, for example, to see her beaming with excitement as her new lover, a French boxer named Marcel Cerdan, wins a middleweight fight right after we had just watched her future self collapse onstage.  The juxtaposition was intentional, of course.  Life is filled with wildly different moments of highs and lows.  Any story that attempts this style of narrative runs the risk of feeling like a series of colliding vignettes, and that is what happens in the film all too often.  And, as LA VIE EN ROSE progresses, it races to reveal more bits of tragedy, almost in the style of a highlight reel.  This is especially true of the final half hour or so, when Edith is on her deathbed, her memories coming faster now.  Key events - including that of a child she lost to meningitis - are introduced and discarded far too quickly to really be effective.  But I imagine that's how it would be, one's life flashing before their eyes when death is imminent.

And those scenes of Edith's final days are quite poignant.  Marian Cotillard plays Edith at all points of her adult life quite brilliantly.  It's an extraordinary performance from A-Z, but how she embodies the drug addled, hunched former shell of a woman in her twilight time (sadly only in her 40s) is really impressive.  There is a brief moment when someone helps her cut the meat on her plate that almost had me in tears - achieved with just one expression on her face.  Cotillard is the reason to watch this movie.

Are there any others? Fans will love the wonderful music, of course, which is lip synced by the actress.  Time and place are evoked adequately, but Tetsuo Nagata's cinematography is nothing special.  Dahan does stage some nice moments, big and small, but his work is not really distinguished enough to make this film memorable.  Everything just feels so-so, not sufficient to make those not already interested in the subject start raving.  The emotions are there, yet it somehow feels empty.  Those who lived through the era may feel differently.  But maybe that is Dahan's ultimate failure - a great director can put a viewer at any point in time and form a connection. Much the way Edith Piaf did with her fans.