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 Marion Cotillard, radiant as Edith Piaf, embraces her patron, Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu), in a joyous moment from Olivier Dahan's "La Vie en Rose," the spectacular film biography of the immortal French chanteuse. |
Towering film celebrates
the tragic life of Piaf
of TheColumnists.com
As Hollywood movie
studios continue to wallow in the excesses of comic book "summer
pictures," effects-laden celebrations of violence, a glut
of cartoon movies for kids and endless sequels, it's up to the
independent and foreign filmmakers to bring us the real movies
the adults among us are dying to see.
For that reason, I rise to applaud Olivier Dahan's "La Vie en Rose," the really big delight of my moviegoing summer so far. This is not only a very well-made film with a grown-up sensibility, but it's also a major production done on a grand scale with an almost endless array of delights to celebrate.
Foremost among them is the absolutely incandescent performance of Marion Cotillard as the immortal "little sparrow" of French song--Edith Piaf. Filmmaker Dahan couldn't have found a more convincing star unless he literally resurrected Piaf and put her back on stage again. You will hear her name repeatedly at Oscar time.
Though millions of Americans certainly know the sound of Piaf--it's been an almost permanent element of the fabric of French song for more than half a century--the dimensions of her uniquely tragic life probably will astound most who see the movie.
Abandoned by her alcoholic mother, a cabaret singer of sorts, the child born Edith Giovanna Gassion was taken under the wing of her father, an itinerant circus performer, who placed her in the care of the madam of a French brothel. Raised by whores in an environment where raw sex, alcohol and drugs were all around her in profusion all during her youth, she discovered her own talent as a singer because it was a marketable asset she could use to enhance her value as a sidewalk entertainer who begged for coins on the streets. After going on the road with her dad as a part of his acrobat/contortionist act, Edith gained a valuable knowledge of how to work the emotions of live audiences and, in her late teens, finally blossomed as a cabaret singer in Parisian night clubs in the 1930s.
Small and frail-looking--some accounts say Piaf was no more than 4 foot 8 inches in height--she had severe health problems throughout her short life. Between the ages 3-7, she was considered legally blind and had severe hearing problems between ages 8-14. But she had a so-called "miracle" recovery from her vision and hearing problems and when she began to sing professionally in her teen years, her voice was big, vibrant and as resilient as the woman herself.
Her first name was given her in honor of the heroic British nurse Edith Cavell, who saved the lives of so many French soldiers during World War I. Her professional surname "Piaf" was derived from the French word for "sparrow." Because of her size and her humble origins, she was known to the French as La Môme (The Kid or The Waif), a name that expressed the enormous affection her public had for this sad-eyed, but spunky little chanteuse.
Plagued throughout her career by her addictions to alcohol and drugs, Piaf seemed especially unlucky in love. She gave birth to her only child after an affair with a delivery boy in her youth. That child, a daughter, died from meningitis at age two. The man she always said was the true love of her life was the internationally famous prizefighter Marcel Cerdan, a married man. That doomed relationship brought her the greatest happiness of her life--and, ultimately, its most tragic plunge. She was married twice after her affair with Cerdan, but the first marriage ended in divorce. Her second husband was half her age, but that marriage, too, was doomed due to Piaf's poor health and her death from cancer at the early age of 47.
This long and lush-looking film tells this tragic story in a style that may seem chaotic until you realize we're experiencing it as a series of convulsive memory bites within the mind of the dying Piaf. There are moments so painfully sad that you will be choking back sobs frequently. Her life was on a constant emotional roller coaster. You'll find yourself rising to the heights of fame with Piaf, then holding on for dear life as her story takes yet another terrible plunge. If the ups and downs of her life give you a rather queasy stomach, then imagine how it must have been to actually live it.
Through this all, Cotillard is simply magnificent. She embodies the young Piaf perfectly, lip-synching her famous songs so flawlessly that you really can't separate the famous voice from the actress mouthing the words. In her final years, Cotillard is transformed into a bent, wizened wreck of a woman who looks decades older than her real age. She plays Piaf as a woman whose lifeblood truly was her bond with her audience. When she knows she can't go on singing, she's as good as dead already.
There are some important missing segments in Dahan's telling of her story--most notably her work with the French underground during the Nazi occupation of France, another motive for the French public's undying love for her. And we see only glimpses of her important influence on young French composers and performers. It's not mentioned in the film, but it's widely known that Piaf discovered the great French actor-singer Yves Montand and was not only his mentor, but his lover. She also mentored Charles Asnavour, another great French singer-actor, and inspired so many others.
The affair with Cerdan provides the emotional heart of the film and when they first meet we begin to hear the music to her most famous song, "La Vie en Rose," in the background. That song, recorded first in 1945, symbolizes the point of Piaf's greatest happiness. The title translates as "the life in pink" or, as we would say it, "in the pink," and she surely must have felt her life was at its rosiest in 1945 with France liberated, the Second World War ending, a new romance beginning and her stardom becoming world-wide at last.
"La Vie en Rose" was first a huge hit in France, but Piaf then recorded it in English with new lyrics ("Hold me close and hold me fast, the magic spell you cast is...La Vie en Rose," etc.) Her recording was covered by literally dozens of other pop singers, including Tony Martin, who had the top American charting of the song. Her rising popularity in America was propelled by the coming of television, where Piaf became a regular in American homes. (She appeared eight times on CBS' "The Ed Sullivan Show," America's top-rated TV variety program.)
The story of her star-crossed affair with Cerdan has been told on the screen before, most notably in Claude LeLouch's 1984 film "Edith and Marcel." Handsome and athletic Jean-Pierre Martins is extremely good as Cerdan, even in the actual fight scenes where Cerdan defeats tough Tony Zale to become the middleweight champion of the world. If you do not know the outcome of the Piaf-Cerdan romance, I won't divulge it here, but take my word that Cotillard's best work as Piaf comes during the scenes where she has to accept the tragic event that destroys her dreams of happiness.
The re-creation of the various periods of Piaf's life are done superbly, especially the club scenes where she finally comes into her own with her unique style and learns to use her whole body in acting out the emotions of her lyrics. These scenes are teeming with extras and have a real-life feel to them that enhances their power.
In one scene, the damaged and visibly shaky Piaf comes to the microphone in front of a huge crowd and we watch her literally summon up all her strength to go into one of her trademark numbers--"Padam, Padam," which, ironically, is about the beating of a lover's heart. Was there ever a performer with as much heart as this "little sparrow"?
An even more moving sequence comes when the sickly Piaf reluctantly listens to a young songwriter perform his new tune for her, a sad tale about someone who "regrets nothing" from a troubled past and wants to start anew. She stops him and immediately says she wants the song in her new act because, "It's my life!" Later, when she takes this somber confessional of a song to her audience, it's her classic "Non, je ne regrette rien" and the impact of this song is such that it seems the coda for her career--and her life.
"La Vie en Rose" will be a difficult film for some to enjoy because of its complex time structure and its almost unrelieved sadness at times. But it's not really something for an audience to "enjoy," but rather to experience. It's ability to plunge you into the soul of this tormented, but powerful artist is magical. This is a great film about an immortal star. Miss it at your own peril.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The photo is courtesy of the film "La Vie en Rose." This column first posted July 9, 2007.
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