LA VIE EN ROSE

La Vie en Rose, Oliver Dahan, 2007

 

HOOK:  A great singer must mean great story, right?

 

STORY: From the school of camp mortification comes the fractured narrative of a heroine who grows up in grandma’s brothel, sings on the streets, gets discovered, loses her love and drowns herself in drugs and drink.

 

GOSSIP: Edith Piaf was really Marcel Marcel with the sound turned up.

 

JOHN: Rent the DVD and play it at 4x speed. There is one great scene in this film, reminiscent of a battle in Ran . Piaf has been browbeaten by a manager who wants her to live the music. Next we see her in a spotlight looking at the indifferent audience. Suddenly she starts to sing, but we don’t hear her voice or the crowd reaction–only see the transformation as if watching a silent screen actress, and Oscar winner Marion Cotillard would have been a great one.

 

GO (1 GO out of four)

 

SPANKY: I like human suffering as much as the next canine, but even with her struggles with booze, tragedy in love, stupid drugs and early death, she gets off a lot easier than the audience. Cotillard is good but they should have given her the Eiffel Tower not an Oscar–she would have been better is smaller doses. And her painted-on eyebrows, wiggling like worms up a huge hardboiled egg drove me nuts. This film is self-conscious, gimmicky and superficial. Don’t rent the DVD, buy a CD of Piaf and play that instead. There’s more drama in her voice than in any movie, even in one about her.

 

“TWO PAWS DOWN” (NO BARKs out of four)

 

KEEPER: “There’ll be time to breathe later.”