Starring: - Jil Aigrot
- Cassandre Berger
- Marion Cotillard
Description:
French actress Marion Cotillard gives the performance of a lifetime in Olivier Dahan’s fascinating but uneven Édith Piaf biopic La môme (La Vie en Rose), which opened the Berlin Film Festival this evening. The France-UK-Czech co-production is gorgeously mounted and of course benefits from Piaf’s famous repertoire, but the decision to jumble the story’s timeline and the 140-minute running time allow the writer-director to overly indulge in scenes of minor relevance. Nevertheless, several outstanding scenes, Piaf’s music and name as well as Cotillard’s tour de force performance should attract sizeable crowds across Europe and beyond. Piaf's strength and her fragility as a woman are clearest in the tragic love affair she had with the married boxing champion Marcel Cedan (singer Jean-Pierre Martins), who died in a plane crash in 1949. Dahan and Cotillard here establish the clear duality of Piaf’s character, though here Dahan also indulges in portraying the World Championship Boxing in much more time and detail than needed, distracting the audience from the main story, something which plagues the film at several intervals, though other aspects of her life (her recording and acting career, her friendship with Dietrich, Aznavour and Cocteau) are neglected or not mentioned at all. Piaf’s music remains wonderful even decades after her death, and the film uses plenty of it even during the childhood scenes. Cinematography by Tetsuo Nagata (Blueberry) is wonderful (especially in the way it uses close-ups to reveal character) and production design is equally solid. The film’s last scene and the choice of the song played over Piaf’s last moments should come as no surprise, though the fact that it still packs a sizeable emotional wallop means that Dahan and Cotillard must have done something right.
La Mome (La Vie En Rose)
