The 2007 biopic of Edith Piaf, "La Vie en Rose," presents the harrowing life story of the famous French singer who performed from the late 1930s into the early 1960s. While Piaf had a successful career, certain elements of her background?her childhood spent in a brothel, for example?were less than idyllic. This film neatly and dramatically outlines the life and career of Piaf in an evocative, if sometimes fragmented, fashion.
The most impressive component of "La Vie en Rose" is the superb acting of Marion Cotillard. Over the course of the movie, Cotillard portrays the singer with such realism that her Piaf transcends the usual boundary between a character of the silver screen and a multi-dimensional person. Even without Cotillard attempting this realist interpretation, the role is challenging. It is her responsibility to convey the paradoxical but simultaneous joys and sorrows that Piaf experiences. These are not run-of-the-mill highs and lows, but events of extreme emotion, making the ease with which Cotillard embodies her role all the more impressive.
Another standout point of the movie is the smooth transition between the singer as child, young woman, and sickly, "old-beyond-her-age" adult. Manon Chevallier and Pauline Burlet, who play the five-year-old and 10-year-old, respectively, look enough like each other and like Cotillard to make the physical evolution of the character persuasive.
In addition, each of the three actors employ similar mannerisms that serve to accentuate Piaf's overall personality: her nervous, rigid stance and her wide-eyed, haunted expression.
The transition between Cotillard's young Piaf and the aged, struggling Piaf is also seamless. The way in which Cotillard is able to express the vivacity of young adulthood in one scene, only to have it directly followed by a scene in which an older Piaf is dying of liver cancer is extraordinary.
This is not to say that the emotional power of "La Vie en Rose" lies entirely in Cotillard's performance. Without the movie's redolent cinematography, no foundation would exist upon which to build Piaf's remarkable character.
For much of the film, director Oliver Dahan makes use of unique camera angling. He presents parts of the film as if from Piaf's perspective; instead of watching Piaf from a distance, the viewer watches Piaf's life through her own eyes. Of these first-person moments, the most effective are the ones early in the movie, when a young Piaf searches for her mother, or when she regains her vision after a long illness.
The way the movie jumps from the beginnings of Piaf's career to the final days of it is poignant. At one point, Dahan sets the scene of Piaf's first performance back-to-back with the scene of the moment she finds out that she will never sing again.
However, the frequent jumps in time do make the movie hard to follow. It becomes the responsibility of the viewer to pay scrupulous attention to the dates that set the scenes. "La Vie en Rose" is, without a doubt, a thinking movie; Dahan intentionally presents the audience with pieces of a puzzle, then invites the audience to put the pieces together.
In the tradition of "Ray" and "Walk the Line," "La Vie en Rose" provides a compelling, if generally depressing, portrait of the troubled artist and of the trappings of fame.