La Vie en Rose (literally "Life in Pink", the English equivalent is "Life through rose-tinted glasses") is the English release title of La Môme, a 2007 French film directed by Olivier Dahan about French singer Édith Piaf, starring Marion Cotillard. The English release title is the name of Piaf's best-known song. The film's original title means "the kid", because Piaf was known as "La Môme Piaf" or "The Kid Sparrow." The film won two Oscars, four BAFTAs, five Césars, three Czech Lions and a Golden Globe. For her performance as Piaf, Marion Cotillard became the first actor or actress to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actress ("Oscar") for a performance entirely in French.
This film also became the third-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades (behind Amélie and Brotherhood of the Wolf). [1]
Plot
The film presents a fractured and largely non-linear series of key events from the life of Édith Piaf. Although scenes often jump back and forth across decades (evoked as flashbacks mostly from within Edith's memories), parts of her childhood take up much of the first part, and the movie ends with her death, and the performance of what is perhaps her signature song, "Non, je ne regrette rien".
As a small child, Edith Piaf is crying on a stoop, near some other children on the streets of Paris. Her mother stands across the alley singing, panhandling for change. Edith's mother writes a letter to her child's father, the contortionist, who is in the trenches of World War 1. She explains that she's dropping Edith off at her mother's so she can pursue the life of the artist.
He returns to Paris and scoops up Edith, covered in insect bites and sores, from under the blanket of a bed in a delapidated house. He drops her off at his mother's house, a bordello madame in Brittany.
There, Edith is adopted informally by Titine, a young troubled redhead who sings to Edith, plays with her, and walks the streets of their small town. Titine and another prostitute are Edith's closest friends and they are repeatedly demeaned and abused by brothel customers. Screams of pain ring out one night, as Titine rushes down the hall to help her friend, who explains, "I let him play doctor and use his instruments on me." Edith enters the room, saying she cannot see. A doctor identifies it as keratitis, an inflammation of the eyes, and her eyes are wrapped in cloth. She and Titine visit St. Therese at Liseux, where she prays for vision. Later, as the members of the brothel pin up laundry in the backyard, Edith slowly pushes off her banage and reveals her eyes, and blinks up at the sky.
Edith's father is discharged from the WW1 forces and takes Edith to live with him, at loud protests by Titine, who must be held back while he bundles Edith into a cart. Her father works in the circus as a contortionist. He cannot stand the manager, so they leave, performing on the streets of Paris. At one point a passerby asks if she is part of the show, and with prompting by her father to "do something," she sings the Marseillaise. More crowds gather around her and are obviously moved.
She makes a friend from a factory job, Mômone, and they wander the streets, glugging from a bottle of wine, and Edith occasionally sings for their supper, quite literally. After singing a few songs and getting a meal in a bistro, her mother approaches her for some change. When Edith gives her a centime (or something that small), her mother yells at her that her daughter will never help her either. She also continues to yell "I am an artiste!" Her mother is grabbed by the waiter, and Edith and her friend quickly leave.
Edith and Mômone go to a local bar and pay Albert, a slick dark haired pimp, cash and receive warnings that if she doesn't pull in more money he will "have her open her legs like the rest of my women."
Singing on the street in the Montmartre neighborhood, a man approaches her and introduces himself- he is Pere Leplee, who has a nightclub that caters to both the lower and upper classes. She sings for him the next day, and his gay lover, bartendress, and other workers at her club are instantly appreciative of her skills, though the bartendress is quite jealous. Pere LePlee changes her name to Piaf, a colloquialism for Sparrow, because her original name is too long and off-putting. He introduces her at his show a week later, with new clothes, and a new song. His audience is also appreciative, and he introduces her to the president of the radio in Paris. She leaves the club quickly, despite the acclaim, and goes to the local bar where she passes Albert a large bundle of cash, and he returns one bill.
Mômone is still in her entourage, and on New Years', 1935, she meets her next Pygmalion-esque manager, yet she does not follow up with him at all, simply pockets his business card. She and Mômone drink buckets of champagne and are rude and loud to almost everyone in their milieu. When one woman approaches to compliment Edith, she responds, "Your face is like a bag!"
Afterwards, Pere Leplee is shot, and everybody thinks it is Edith's role in introducing him to the mafia, namely, the pimp Albert, that causes his murder. She is interviewed at a raucous cafe with a ton of paparazzi. She tries to sing at a low grade cabaret with Albert accompanying on accordion but she is shouted off the stage.
In utter despair, she finally meets up with her next savior, and she meets a jewel of her career- Marguerite, a talented songwriter and accompanist. He discovers her "beautiful hands," and teaches her to gesture with them while singing. He also emphasizes enunciation, formal wear, and comportment. Before their first concert at a music hall, "Not a cabaret," the manager intones, she has a fierce bout of stage fright and is huddled in the dark in her dressing room, thirty minutes after curtain call. He advises her finally to "stand up," and she manages to shake off this fright. This performance is a resounding success.
She is in a large flat in Paris with her entourage, reading a Cocteau play, and joking with Mômone who is dressed as a man in this scene. She puts off the conductor of the orchestra despite the performance being in "48 hours," she invites in a Corporal who asks if she will perform his song. She listens and immediately embraces it, performing it the next night. (This is the trailer.)
She travels to New York for more performances. She meets Marcel, a fellow French national boxer competing for the World Champion title abroad. They first dine at his "local spot" a diner where she gets a pint of beer and a pastrami sandwich. She teases him that this is not a date, and they end up at a very fancy restaurant, where she orders the wine and entrees. He reveals that he has a pig farm, to which she laughs very loud, and it is run now by his wife and three children. She is quiet, but is quickly falling in love, she reveals to Mômone that night. He attends her performance, and she attends his bouts for the championship, which he wins. They are led through a fire escape of her hotel, where she reveals, "I'm beginning to like this city. There are the stars!" and they have their first night together.
At a party in her suite, she babbles to her maid and secretary Ginou that she doesn't mind he is married, she knows he loves his family. Mômone is annoyed that Edith talks about Marcel all the time. Edith calls Marcel, inducing him to fly to New York from Paris tonight. Mômone threatens to leave Edith during the phone call.
The next morning Edith wakes up to Marcel, who is in a suit lounging on her bed. She rushes off to get him coffee, joking with Mômone and Louis who are glumly ash faced, standing in the suite in different rooms. She rushes off to get his present- a watch- and gets irritated that she can't find it. Ginou comes to the door with a very sad expression and exasperated, Edith asks what is wrong with everyone. Louis, her manager, takes her aside and tells her that Marcel died in the plane crash. Edith hysterically searches for the ghost of Marcel that was lounging on her bed just a moment before.
Her mourning consists of seeking fortune tellers, cutting her hair and performing.
There were many flash forwards to a small aged-looking Edith with frizzy red hair, sitting in a chair by the lakeside. She can barely move, and fights with her nurse about drinking carrot juice. Another set of flash forwards depict Edith with short curly hair, plastered to her face like she is feverish, singing on stage and collapsing every other song. She is taken back to her green room, only to be yelled at by Louis to stop performing, as she is conducting her "suicide tour." She gets more shots of morphine and continues to perform. Later that night, she asks to ride with "The American," to drive 400 miles to another town to "catch some air." She tells him to turn around, and in his bad French he questions her, then gets into a car accident. We learn in another flash forward that she has broken two ribs and must be hospitalized, explaining the earlier flash forwards, of her convalescence in Grasse, with the carrot juice fights.
In another flash forward, she is hosting a large party at a Parisian bistro. She toasts to Marguerite who saw her "as a princess," before anyone else did. She flirts with the waiter, and topples a bottle of champagne, not due to drunkenness, but her arthritis. She finally sees the owner of the restaurant and implores him to get her a gift. She asks for a ring, with tons of diamonds on it. Louis, quietly tells him to simply replace the champagne she spilled. The next morning Louis opens her bedroom door to a small Edith on the large bed, with curtains drawn. He offers her breakfast but she tells him no, she is expecting someone. A young man comes in the room and lounges on her bed. Louis leaves, sitting outside the door. Time passes and he re-enters the room. Five or so bloody syringes are on the bed and both Edith and her young man are lying there with their eyes open, in relatively the same position.
She travels to California after her first convalescence and is married to a man- the first husband- and driving around with Ginou and some others, in a car. Ginou is carsick and Edith takes the small break as an opportunity to drive the car, which she does, into a cactus. She jokes that she will now hitchhike.
She sits with her husband at the side of a pool and is offered a strange fruity martini drink. She wonders if he will divorce her now. In the next scene, they are at a doctor's office, in America. She explained that she has been using drugs since the plane crash. Before the doctor can tell her how the shots have been affecting her health, her husband says he wants her to go into rehab. She says she wants to change.
A small, tiny hunched Edith slowly pads into her living room. Her entourage is crowded, concerned, on the other side of the room. She determines that it is impossible, for obvious reasons, to perform at the Olympia. Her long-time arranger Bruno Coquatrice is told to cancel it. A new songwriter and arranger shows up wtih a song- "Je ne regrette rien," and Edith explains this is her life, this is what she lives for, and tells Bruno that she will perform at the Olympia.
She sits in her dressing room and searches for her cross that she always wears. She sends her maid and secretary out to get it, and at that point has a series of flashbacks. When she returns with the cross, Edith places it on and shuffles out onto the stage. She begins singing "Je ne regrette rien," to more flashbacks.
A sunny day, in the south of France. She walks out to the beach with her knitting. This is a smaller, red-haired Edith with an obvious stoop. She waves at the lifeguard and sits near the breakers. A young woman with a purse and bag approach and introduces herself. She is there for an interview. She asks Edith simple questions- what is her favorite color, her favorite food "Pot roast." and then more questions. What is the most important thing for an adult to know? "To love." For a woman? A child? A baby? All answers: "To love."
Louis carries a bundled up Edith into her bedroom and tucks her into bed. The subtitle reads that this is the date of her death. She is afraid. She says she cannot remember things. She flashes back to small moments, her mother recognizing that they have similar features, but odd eyes. Her father giving her a Japanese doll that she longed for.
She remembers her child, Marcelle, that she had with Louis when she was a street performer. She remembers how he yelled at her for taking Marcelle out on the street. She was singing in a cabaret when Louis came to tell her Marcelle was in the hospital. They arrive, and Marcelle has already died.
Edith dies.
Cast
Production
- Four songs were entirely performed by "Parigote" singer Jil Aigrot: "Mon Homme", "Les Mômes de la Cloche", "Mon Légionnaire", "Les Hiboux" as well as the third verse and chorus of "L'Accordéoniste" and the first chorus of "Padam Padam". Only parts of these last two songs were sung because they were sung while Piaf/Cotillard was fatigued and collapsed on stage.
- Apart from that, "La Marseillaise" is performed by child singer Cassandre Berger (lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, who plays the young Édith in the film), and Mistinguett's "Mon Homme" and "Il m'a vu nue" (sung in part by Emmanuelle Seigner) also appear.
- The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
Box office performance
In theaters, the film grossed US$81,945,871 worldwide — $10,072,300 in the United States and Canada and $71,873,571 elsewhere in the world.[1] In the countries of France, Algeria, Monaco, Morocco and Tunisia, the film grossed a total of $42,014,775.[2]
This film became the third-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades (behind Amélie and Brotherhood of the Wolf). [2]
Critical reception
The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. As of July 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 75% of the 135 critics to view the film had given it positive reviews.[3] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 66 out of 100, based on 29 reviews.[4] In particular, critics praised the lifelike and deeply emotional performance of lead actress Marion Cotillard, culminating in her Oscar win for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Critic A.O Scott of The New York Times, while unimpressed with the film itself, was still rather impressed with Cotillard performance: "It is hard not to admire Ms. Cotillard for the discipline and ferocity she brings to the role."[5] Carino Chocano of the Los Angeles Times opined that "Marion Cotillard is astonishing as the troubled singer in a technically virtuosic and emotionally resonant performance..." Richard Nilsen from Arizona Republic was even more enthusiastic, writing, "Don't bother voting. Just give the Oscar to Marion Cotillard now. As the chanteuse Édith Piaf in La Vie en rose, her acting is the most astonishing I've seen in years."[3]
Awards
Marion Cotillard has won seven Best Actress Awards for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose:
- The Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Motion Picture (musical or comedy)
- The Prix Lumière (equivalent to the Golden Globe in France) for Best Actress
- The BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Music
- The Academy Award (otherwise known as the Oscars) for Best Actress in a Leading Role
- The César Award (equivalent to the Oscars in France) for Best Actress in a Leading Role
- The Czech Lion (equivalent to the Oscars in the Czech Republic) Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Other Awards include:
References
External links
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