Film Review: La Vie en Rose (2007)

This is the most difficult film I’ve ever seen in my life. Knowing little about Edith Piaf‘s life other than the well-known fact that it had been tragic, I came to it ill-prepared for just how much pain she endured in her very short life. More importantly, while I’d heard her songs many times, having grown up with a mother who adored her, until now I’d never actually heard any of them with great clarity. Purchased at various garage sales, the records we owned had always been scratchy and faint, so while Piaf’s voice still managed to occasionally break through the squeaks and clicks, the faint sounds hid its extraordinary power. So when I saw the film and heard the songs flood my ears (I wore headphones, as I saw it on my laptop), it was a mind-shattering experience.

The film opens with one of Piaf’s last performances. It may actually be her last performance, but director Olivier Dahan chose a non-linear narrative in which to tell the story, so I’m not certain exactly when it occurs, but it doesn’t matter. Already the film plunges into high drama as hospital workers spill out of an ambulance, while the film intercuts with shots of Piaf standing in a spotlight, singing her heart out in front of a vast audience. The voice doesn’t float over the hall; rather, it fills it and probably the body and soul of every person in it.

We then are taken back about forty years, to Piaf’s early childhood, where she’s quickly abandoned by her mother and forced to live in a brothel as her father drifts in and out of her life. The early scenes set the stage for the many heartaches throughout Piaf’s life, as we see the various characters who appear and disappear around the lonely little girl, some of whom try to help her but who ultimately fail — and thus failing Piaf. It’s an utterly miserable France in which Piaf grows up, gray and cold and terribly, terribly cruel, especially to its most vulnerable citizens.

The early scenes were the most painful to watch, so much so that I had to steel myself to continue. Possibly because some of it reminded me of my own childhood, I would urge anyone who dislikes watching films where children are mistreated and abandoned to carefully consider whether they want to subject themselves to this, or at least to prepare themselves for it.

Piaf is discovered while singing on a street corner by a nightclub impresario played by a subdued, grave Gerard Depardieu. The years that follow find Piaf finding — and subsequently, perhaps inevitably, losing — love, throwing herself fully into her relationships. She pays a horrible price for her deep romanticism, but one gets the feeling that it was one she gladly, happily paid. The film jumps back and forth between time periods, a technique that occasionally made it hard to follow the narrative, but for the most part it works. The tragedy the audience sees unfold in the end, with an ailing Piaf struggling to regain her voice, casts a long, wide shadow over everything behind it, reflected in the sorrow in five-year-old Edith’s eyes.

When one considers the enormous power that current musical divas wield, and how much control they exert over their lives, their careers, it’s doubly shocking how little power Piaf had in her own life. Used and abused by nearly every man with whom she becomes involved — including her father — and suffering from a debilitating drug addiction following a near-fatal car accident, she gives the impression of always grasping for a measure of security, whether in love or in her songs. Whenever she seems to be close enough to reach it, however, the gods (despite her fervent prayers to Saint Therese) conspire to snatch it away from her. Later in life, with fame and fortune at her feet, she’s transformed into a demanding artiste who can command an audience with the president of France, yet one constantly on the verge of falling apart.

Although the film runs just over two hours long, as the ending nears, the scenes shorten, the music swells with heartbreak. Piaf (above) on her deathbed is a shriveled ghost, made even more ghastly when one considers her relative youth (she died at 47). A few surprise (to me, anyway) flashbacks reveal a few more heretofore hidden layers of her life, including what’s undoubtedly a fictionalized yet no less powerful childhood moment involving her father. The very final shot of that memorable face, dramatic and compelling in all its pale, pathetic glory, lingers long after the last note is played.

Stunning French actress Marion Cotillard delivers a larger-than-life, mesmerizing performance as the great Piaf. (Nominated for a Golden Globe, she’s been inexplicably placed in the category of “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion-Picture in a Comedy or Musical,” even though La Vie en Rose is neither.) Although she doesn’t actually use her own singing voice (all songs are Edith Piaf recordings), she uses her entire body — especially her soulful eyes and fragile frame — to throw herself completely into each of them, never wasting a single gesture, always haunting each frame with her small but larger-than-life presence. Her physical transformation from beautiful young Edith to the shrunken shadow of a woman in the end is startling in its breathtaking difference.

Where do French filmmakers find actors such as Cotillard (at right)? I can’t think of a single Hollywood actress who can pull off this complicated, multi-layered, and sometimes unsympathetic character with such emotional depth and pathos. Cotillard inhabits the role with every ounce of her soul. Her body is all hard angles and thin appendages, but her face…oh, that face. It glows in nearly every scene, whether under a blue-gray spotlight or hidden in shadow. Her eyes can carry an entire scene with barely a blink.

The two child actors portraying Piaf at five and ten (Manon Chevallier and Pauline Burlet, respectively) seem to have made from the same raw material. Chevallier especially reminds me of Keisha Castle-Hughes, the phenomenal young Maori actor who reduced audiences around the world to wracking sobs in the New Zealand film Whale Rider. All three are capable of such finely honed performances, it’s almost frightening when one considers their relatively tender ages.

I can find very little to criticize about this film. Even the non-linear narrative form works, despite the occasional confusion in determining the timeline of Piaf’s life. Dahan apparently was a painter before he took up film directing, and his eye for composition and the power of color shows in every frame. Prepare yourself for a real emotional experience, and have a box of tissues close by. You’ll be reaching for it often, but most especially when Piaf opens her mouth to sing. The woman’s mere breath will assault your heart.

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