Dir: Olivier Dahan

Starring: Marion Cotillard

One would like to describe the “Little Sparrow” as a diamond amongst the rough; a child of the streets who fought her way to the top through plucky determinism and natural talent. However, Edith Piaf was as rough as they come and the glare of the untarnished diamond, at times, was faint. As she charmed the French bourgeoisie in Parisian nightclubs, Piaf’s personal life of hedonism was fuelled by a need to drown out the past and the present, leading to life of debauchery, absinthe and cigarettes; and this was before the golden morphine years.

Olivier Dahan’s biopic of the legendary French singer is by no means unique in his cinematic depiction of a performer’s life. Wrought with all the clichéd ingredients that most biopics have included over the last few years (Ray and Walk the Line, we are given the loves and losses suffered by our protagonist, combined with interludes of drug taking and heavy drinking. We are shown Piaf’s rise and her dramatic fall from grace. However, Dahan’s intelligent use of editing between Piaf’s childhood, her formative years, and her premature decline before death, gives an interesting insight into the building blocks of her star persona and her ‘true self’, although one struggles to get a real glimpse of this. Marion Cotillard’s accurate portrayal of Piaf’s contorted body and animated face manages to hide a great deal of the emotional strife that echoes within her awkward physique.

It is the fantastic lead performance by Cotillard that drives the film and carries it through some of its more flailing moments. For example, I could not help but be aware of the set designs that formed the backdrop of the first thirty minutes of the film. The cobbled streets and the interior shots of the brothel had the aura of a Dickensian BBC adaptation, and the gold-hearted prostitutes followed in a similar vein. Moments of beautiful cinematography and genuine poignancy were often interrupted by unnecessary epiphany-like moments involving Piaf’s guardian angel, Saint Theresa, although such scenes will surely appeal to many of the more sentimental viewers in the audience.

La Vie en Rose manages to successfully compact much of Edith Piaf’s life into a reasonable 140 minute run time. Impossible to include every detail, Dahan hand-picks defining moments in the singer’s career and personal life that allow us a glimpse into her remarkable existence. The film inevitably draws comparisons with the downfall of Hollywood’s golden-girl, Judy Garland, and the heavy-lidded eyes of Piaf (and Cotillard) bare a striking resemblance to Bette Davis. Ironically, Bette Davis’s infamous character as Baby Jane Hudson in Robert Aldrich’s classic, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, mirrors a similar trajectory of ‘the fallen star.’ However, the downfall of these women (the fictional as well as real) does not diminish the fact that they were successful and continue to be iconic.

If Aldrich sought to parody the story of the fallen star, then Dahan is clearly attempting to lift her back up onto her pedestal. La Vie en Rose may be flawed but it is certainly a cut above the average biopic, but perhaps this has more to do with the fact that Edith Piaf will always remain a cut above them all.

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