A near flawless portrayal of a flawed French icon

By Steve Persall, Times Film Critic
Published June 28, 2007

La Vie en Rose (PG-13) (140 min.) - Edith Piaf's voice was eternal long before her frail body failed at age 47. Tragedy, cancer, drugs and drink damaged the French chanteuse until she simply couldn't carry all that pain anymore.

Piaf was also as vulgarly flamboyant as she was vulnerable, what Americans would call a blend of Madonna and Judy Garland. The song used as a title for Olivier Dahan's appropriately messy biography is Piaf's signature. Her defiant rage at dying light - Non, je ne regrette rien (No, I regret nothing) - could be her epitaph.

La Vie en Rose has everything that celebrity biopics often mishandle: raw talent discovered, scandalized and abused by fate and vices. What Dahan does with the trajectory of fame is uniquely jumbled, not chronological but vaguely thematic. The film's shifts from era to era can be frustrating until you realize that's how Piaf might tell her story as a deathbed confessional.

We would relish the juicy stuff and tolerate any parts lingered upon too long, not willing to risk losing her interest in being candid. Piaf apparently had that kind of irresistible aura and Marion Cotillard's portrayal has the same effect. Plain and simple, this is an astonishing impersonation from her physicality - the gradually stooped posture, severe beauty with perfect aging makeup - and flawless lip synching to Piaf's voice.

Days after a viewing, I'm still marveling at Cotillard's performance, which defies description. Even if Dahan chose a more linear tack, she would keep us riveted to the genre's conventions. Awards consideration is certainly in her future.

La Vie en Rose begins (and spends a bit too long) with Piaf's rough childhood, the daughter of a soldier and singer who both crumble emotionally. Little Edith (played by Marion Chevallier and Pauline Burlet) is passed among fringe relatives and into the care of a brothel madam where a prostitute (Emmanuelle Seigner) clings to her.

Alongside her desperate father, Edith sings for coins one day and her gift is immediately proved. A cabaret owner (Gerard Depardieu) promotes her into a Parisian sensation; his murder by mobsters becomes her first brush with celebrity scandal.

It isn't the last. Piaf reportedly went through so many men and binges that keeping track of them all would require a trilogy. Dahan focuses on her affair with married boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martens), perhaps most important because he bridged the brutality and fame she experienced. When he disappears, the crushing of her will is obvious but incomplete. Cotillard always clues us that Piaf is tougher than she appears.

La Vie en Rose continues through milestones: a U.S. tour where Americans don't "get" her poignant and melancholy song stylings, depression that stalled her career and the grandiose comeback that followed. Side characters get confusing with Dahan's shuffling and Cotillard almost impossibly holding our full attention.

At other times, Dahan composes deceptively complex scenes, so rich in structure and emotion. Piaf's reaction to bad news about Marcel combines denial, psychosis and sympathy with a wonderfully measured tracking shot leading back to the only place she felt peaceful, before an adoring audience. Simpler but equally effective is a sequence when Piaf sings but the soundtrack is mute, showing only the rapt faces in the crowd.

La Vie en Rose isn't flawless, like Piaf's recordings, but neither was she. Dahan's ragtag narrative punctuated by brilliance is a reflection of his subject and risky since some viewers won't understand that's his point. But I can't recall any other celebrity film biography willing to admit it can't do its subject justice. Or one that with its honesty, actually does. A-

Steve Persall, Times film critic

[Last modified June 26, 2007, 17:36:39]