Article summary

From the slums of Paris to the limelight of New York, Edith Piaf's life was a battle to sing and survive, live and love. Raised in poverty, Edith's magical voice and her passionate romances and friendships with the greatest names of the period - Yves Montand, Jean Cocteau, Charles Aznavour, Marlene Dietrich, Marcel Cerdan and others - made her a star all around the world. But in her audacious attempt to tame her tragic destiny, the Little Sparrow - her nickname - flew so high she could not fail to burn her wings.

The life and career of Edith Piaf explodes on the big screen with LA VIE EN ROSE, a biopic which focuses on Piaf's relationships with some of the most eccentric personalities of her generation, including Marlene Dietrich, Yves Montand, and many more.

‘Simply sensational… worthy of an Oscar’

‘A must-see’

‘simply sensational… it’s absolutely stunning to watch’

‘an excellent performance from Marion Cotillard… magical’

‘Staggering’

Customer's review

I hated this film.

Absolutely abhorrent. The narrative was poorly constructed with no real depth at any particular moment, no real exploration or any kind of binding motif or theme. It felt disjointed and trite - like a trailer for the life of Edith Piaf rather than any kind of real artistic representation or craft. Material haphazardly ordered, montage and ellipsis serially abused, the acting average. The screenplay was nothing special either, with some of the rare subtle nuances totally lost by the translation on the subtitles, which were dotted with Americanisms, no doubt to help the US audience get some of the jokes. Better to rely on your ears if you speak French.

I couldn't help but feel, having sat through it, that the snob factor of this as a French biopic is a veneer that has allowed its glaring flaws to go unnoticed. That it won so many awards and so much acclaim is, to my mind, utterly astonishing.

A confused kaleidoscope of Piaf's life

This is an absorbing biopic of the great French singer Edith Piaf. It is well acted and a gripping story, and the song are marvellous. I would probably have given it 5 stars except that the form of the story almost drove me mad.

It is all very well to have all these flashbacks, events out of sequence etc if you are already familiar with the details of Miss Piaf's life, but if like me you are not it is absolutely infuriating. I would have much prefered the film to be in a straightforward chronological sequence.

As it is, the parts about her childhood and youth are quite fascinating, but some details are so vague that I had difficulty understanding what was going on, and I would really have prefered the film to take a more coherent form.

Most annoying of all, the scene where she makes her first appearance on stage at the music hall, just when you think you are going to hear her belting out some marvellous song, instead all you hear is an insipid piano accompaniment, which almost made me want to throw something at the TV. Was this supposed to be meaningful in some way? It just irritated me beyond belief.

If this film had been presented more coherently, it would have been better, in my opinion.

Non, je ne regrette rien

This movie is based on the life of the famous French singer Edith Piaf, and will drain you emotionally and physically (if you're not one for long periods of sitting still)

Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):

1. Little Edith has a hard knock life with her mother, and eventually is "rescued" by her father, and taken to live with her grandmother
2. Grandma's girls (and clients) call her "Madame"
3. She is taken under the wing of Titine, one of the girls, and learns about song and prayer
4. Dad returns and decides that he will be the stable influence in her life
5. ... so he raises her in a circus where he's a contortionist
6. Soon she's singing for her supper and hitting the bottle
7. ...and the needle
8. ... and continues to do so, stubborn as a mule, ruining her health
9. ... while singing her heart out

From the streets to the brothel, from the circus to the streets, from the streets to the clubs, through bad patches and bubbly heights, culminating in a passionate love affair and the inevitable decline, the viewer will love, hate and pity the temperamental singer, though not necessarily in that order.

Although not my type of music, and given that I normally shy away from long dramatic movies, there's no escaping the fact that Marion Cotillard gives an absolutely magnificent performance. The supporting actors, the settings and the cinematography make this a memorable watching experience.

This is not a movie to brighten your day, lift your spirits or make your heart soar, but if you asked me if I regret watching it, I'd have to say "Non, je ne regrette rien".

Amanda Richards

La vie en rose of a not-so-Little Sparrow (7/10)

`La vie en rose` (or La Môme - "the kid" - as it is known in its native France) is a refreshingly unconventional biopic of the diminutive chanteuse Edith Piaf. While it charts the singer's childhood - first in a brothel, then as a street performer - it thankfully resists the need to take the prosaic approach common to most biopics, by spelling out her story from A to Z. While not entirely free of the genre's clichés (montages of congratulatory newspaper cuttings fill in some of the historical gaps) La Môme is an impressionistic piece that evokes the intensity and melodrama of the singer's life and songs. The film may not therefore tell you an awful lot about Edith Piaf - which might disappoint if that's what you were expecting - but the film captures something of her mood: a life of violent turmoil, tragedy, drunkedness and adulation.

With sudden and non-chronological shifts in time, and a mood of inexorable tragedy, Piaf's life is presented as nightmarish and carnivalesque. You may not find yourself even liking the eponymous character very much as Marion Cotillard's Piaf is a caricature of the "Little Sparrow"'s tragic persona, one arguably inseparable from the myths redolent in her music. In a performance for which she won an oscar, Cotillard overdoes it at almost every capricious turn, from the vulgar to the vulnerable.

`La vie en rose` is unrelentingly miserable, with the leading lady screaming and collapsing with such a cartoonish vigour that it is hard to tell whether she is guilty of overacting or tongue-in-cheek parody. The film's style - its bloody, saturated reds and urgent, busy camerawork - leads me to believe that it might be the latter. The roving movement of the camera sits somewhere between Scorcese's mob operas and the hyperactively whimsical (and distinctively French) filmmaking of Jean-Pierre Jeunet ('Amelie', `Delicatessen').

Certainly, fans of Piaf wanting to learn of her (slightly controversial) role in the war-time period will be quite shocked by the lack of concession to establishing fact in this film. While this does not bother me - I usually find biopics tediously obsequious - some moments of calm might have salved the excruciating intensity of La vie en rose, which wallops you over the head with melodrama in the manner of Piaf's singing voice. Furthermore, it seems that Piaf's childhood is in fact shrouded in mystery, and certainly her loyalties during the Second World War are also subject to debate, so a more impressionistic account was probably the logical option. There are several brilliant scenes, not least the one in which Piaf learns of her lover's death in a plane crash, and she is seen walking through her appartment in despair straight onto the stage in front of an audience. A horrific and dreamlike sequence, it's suggestive of a physically punishing performing life impelled by loss and sorrow, and possibly a self-destructive streak.

One element that isn't consistent in this film is Piaf's size. Piaf was the "Little Sparrow" - shy of five feet - and the producers of `La vie en rose` didn't make up their mind if they were to be true to this fact or not. Sometimes she is presented as conspicously little, crowded by her supporting cast - technically dificult, for Cotillard is at least a foot taller than the woman she is portraying - while in most other scenes the pretence is abandoned. In the case of her lover, a middleweight boxer, it is patently ridiculous that Piaf be close to his eye level. Maybe there is some kind of deliberate metaphorical value being woven into this - her changing stature or confidence for instance - but I'm not buying it. "The little sparrow" was very much part of her identity and iconography, and they have cut crude corners around it.

I can see why Marion Cotillard won the Oscar.

If nothing else, I encourage people to buy this film just to admire and marvel at the sheer brilliance and remarkable finesse with which Cotillard portrays Edith Piaf. Her acting throughout is simply exceptional and in a class of its own. Such talent is rare and one of a kind! Great also if you like Edith Piaf's songs. Cotillard certainly deserved her Oscar and Bafta!
10 Stars just for her acting!

La Vie En Rose [2007]

Article summary

Customer's review

I hated this film.

A confused kaleidoscope of Piaf's life

Non, je ne regrette rien

La vie en rose of a not-so-Little Sparrow (7/10)

I can see why Marion Cotillard won the Oscar.

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