Chekhov's Mistress
La Vie En Rose
Last week a friend called and asked if I had any Edith Piaf recordings I could burn for him. He said he had to have No Regrets (Non je ne regrette rien) because he had seen La Vie en Rose and had been thinking about it since. I wasn’t intending to see it myself, but this changed my mind.
There is much I could say in way of review, but I think John Baker put it perfectly:
“This is not a great film, but there is much to recommend it and I suspect it will linger in the memory for some time to come. The central performance is brilliant and the music is wonderful. Non je ne regrette rien.”
See this film for no other reason than Marion Cotillard’s stunning physicality in the role of Piaf. From crude street girl to charmingly tyrannical – still crude – entertainer to withered morphine addict, Cotillard pleads for your every emotion and gets it! I felt shaken at the end, admittedly taken in by the film’s finale, recapitulating the most heart rendering moments of Piaf’s extraordinary life.
I could never decide if Piaf’s short and extreme life was tragic or not. On the one hand she was born into the underbelly of society – daughter of a circus contortionist, no less, and raised for a while in a brothel – but once discovered, raised herself (by the gift of her voice and the help of a few others) to fame. She was a true believer in Love and passion, yet most of the people she loved were ripped away from her. These fundamental tensions are played well in the film by a fairly intricate weaving of three story lines: a slumly childhood, discovery and rise to fame, and stubborn deterioration and death. While I thought that having three elements intertwined didn’t hurt the film, the shifts in time seemed less purposeful and logical by the end than they should have. For instance, such a device is sometimes used as a dying character looks back on their life, but that was not the case here so it came off as trying to fit-everything-in.
Like any biopic the main points are all covered and historical gaps are glossed. A new husband is introduced late in the film whose involvement with Piaf’s life seems less significant even than some of her assistants; or another husband, Théo, whose name is uttered at the end but is never a part of the story. The film would have done better to focus on its central characters instead of tossing in tragic croutons – like the sudden revelation in a dream sequence toward the end about the death of Piaf’s one and only child. You wonder too, if the film is so unfocused, why the war years – and Piaf’s dramatic involvement with the French Resistance – were left uncovered.
But all is forgiven when Piaf’s eyes light up upon hearing Non je ne regrette rien saying “that is my life.” From those words she’s inspired to go on and do that one last concert (I’m not sure if it was her last, but that’s how it would appear from the film), and we’re right there with the audience at the theater crying and loving this near collapsed sprite, knowing this is her farewell.
The photography – always a defining factor for me – was spot on, casting a harsh light on Piaf’s childhood upbringing in brothels and the circus, and bathing the high times of her career in muted tones, evoking the romance of the 40s and 50s. At times it seemed as though Piaf’s lipstick were the only color on the screen.
As John said, the music is wonderful, it’s used to great effect throughout the film, and I suspect Ms. Piaf’s posthumous career is getting a renewed boost from it – in fact, according to Judith Thurman’s piece in the New Yorker last June (“French Blues” [not available online]), where she speaks somewhat dimly of the film, that is happening, and rightly so. When there are so many singers in the world who owe their success to their looks instead of talent, it’s refreshing to hear a recording of the little sparrow Piaf belting out some song she clearly seems to have lived.
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