La Vie en Rose

** ¼

A PUSILANIMOUS PINTSIZE PORTRAIT OR/
A PICKLED PIAF PUZZLE
(A SEMI-SURVEY OF SOOTHSAYERS` SAYINGS!)

Edith Piaf had a wretched (she was a champagne hound), excrutiating, winding, rapturous, sinuous, miraculous (at times)...(oh yes!) a very painful life, and this is what I took away from the screening as I exited the Arbor theater-house, smitten with jet-lag from the topsy-turvy flashbacks, on a muggy, rain-belched... dreary, primal, summer day. Good art comes with a price, and “The Little Sparrow” paid her toll, rung her bell for a tide, but then her moonbeam was switched off, yet fortunately she left us with a cache of timeless tunes. “La Vie en Rose” was heart-breaking, it was tears and flapdoodle all the way, when I attended a matinee on Sunday the 24th of June to a pert near packed house. Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf was superb, and will likely be up for an Oscar for 2007-a radiant performance that left you quaking! Ms Cotillard portrays "The Little Sparrow" in a bewildering gamut of roles over shuffled, beaucoup time-from when she was a waif of a teenager to when she morphed to a decrepit morphine addict after a bad tumble in a car accident. The use of make-up and costumes surely was the crowning touch here as the poor old girl was all bent over, crusty and shaking, quivering for another shot for an ample allotment of frames, and the good-olde torch-singer was just in her early forties. Most of the time I was lost in space as the random recollection of events unfolded on the picture screen; fractured-revery, no doubt, of a drug-addled Edith in the South of France in her final days (early 1960s).

Nonetheless the saving grace herein is Marion Cotillard who has freed herself up to give an open interpretation of the “Little Sparrow". Her eyes are expressive and she looks a little like Peter Lorrie, one critic said, but she is more a delightful little marionette that flops and bops on the stage and lip-synchs all the Piaf classics with verve. Her gutteral use of the French at Maxims in New York shows off her good acting. I adored the hunchbacked, frizzle- haired scenes (or the several scenes) too, in terms of her performance! Marion is a lively sprite that prances about and keeps you excited. The acme or turning point, in terms of finding her way, was when "La Mome Piaf" sings "La Marsailles", the French national anthem, in the streets of Paris with her freak show paps. Thus, her destiny was carved in stone!

A streamlined summary of her misfortunes would be apropos for any duck soup fan of Piaf, though you should get yourself to a library, read up on her life with persnickety, in order to fill the twinkie with cream, but here`s just a short shot. Her mother was a singing waif, a loser who went nowhere. Her father was a circus contortionist who parked her in a bordello of Normandy, with his Madam Mamma; then doomed her to a flaky, unbalanced childhood. She was sickly in her youth, and was nearly blind from illness. Edith was in two bad car accidents that left her a morphine addict. Her manager, Louis Lepleé (Gérard Depardieu), was murdered and she was implicated. She drank way too much booze, especially champagne. Her boxer-beau died in an untimely plane crash. She roved the streets of Paris begging for morsels with sweet song. She died at the ripe age of forty-seven a broken spirit.

The really stirring scenes were when she was on stage singing her songs, and Olivier Dahan actually used Piaf`s original songs. I will make a point to drop by Waterloo this weekend (today is the 26th) and pick up a platter of her songs. I may try to get a different collection from the soundtrack. This is the real test of all of this sound and flurry: her art! Too, I liked the scenes with Raymond Asso, who really hammered her into shape, from a barroom belcher to a classy art-house singer, sort of the way that Brian Epstein boldly led The Beatles out of the concrete alleys of Liverpool. Piaf seems to bridge the social classes here from the rigorous training. A lost idea that boomeranged, after seeing a delightful "Paris, Je T`Aime" at Dobie, was her worship of St. Theresa, who the sisters attributed to her return to good health and eyesight; Piaf prayed to St. Theresa prodigously thereafter!

I eyed a good many reviews (ayed some, denied others), but had the good sense to do so after I saw the film. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 75% on its Critics Tomatometer, a sterling reading. Many of the points made by critics had gummy-adhesives as I continue to weigh the merits (or demerits) of this feather-brained biopic. The point made by Laura Clifford about the scrambled, circuitous timeline was fully accepted, appreciated, and internalized by this here author, aye, she was truly on-the-mark in her assessment! I was on rollercoaster ride the whole time and never knew if it was 1958 or 1918. The entire thing is a flashback of alcohol dementia, so it is alphabet soup all the way. Roger Ebert loved it, but his review is very as-a-matter-of-fact; not too much flare in his lines. Rex Reed recognizes the superb performance of Marion Cotillard as the saving grace of “La Vie en Rose”; this seems to be a consensus of many, including myself. Carina Chocano with the Los Angeles Times really sung its praises, but wisely notes that it: “suffers from trying to cover too much territory in too little time.” Boo Allen from the Denton Record Chronicle pipes in that writer-director Olivier Dahan is just interpreting Piaf`s life, and that it is not suppose to be a documentary. Dan Callahan from Slant has a really creative and funny piece; he seems to praise it but his comical use of words makes the film out to be ridiculous in many ways.

The greatest fault of the film was the mumbo-jumbo, scrambled time sequencing, where WWI and the Fifties blur like watercolor and agua. Some found this as a virtue, but I gleaned this as confusion boats, where you never knew which decade you were in (especially if you ocasionally take a trip to the snack bar or lavatory). Someone should have put the Sherman and Peabody time machine in storage, and snatched it away from Olivier Dahan. Another bothersome aspect is that all the famous people that Edith knew were not really touched on. Say Marlene Dietrich or Jean Cocteau are not really properly explored in the way their lives interacted with hers, and these free-loops carried on for more than two hours. And where was Maurice Chevalier, the most jovial male cabaret singer in France? And Yves Montand-why didn`t he play a central role in the movie? And as for the French Resistance, shouldn`t this have been dealt with in particular? Surely Edith Piaf was the shimmering chanteuse of France, and she represented the free-spirit of France, but this was not investigated at all! To my way of thinking these are fatal errors. A chronological or linear presentation of events would have been more effective.

We really need a substantial biographical documentary on Edith Piaf. There is ample testimony, photos, sound recordings, and film footage to put together something firm. Her real story is far more interesting! In the meantime I will be running these YouTube clips. "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" for this somewhat negative call.

Magically you are reading this on your iPhone at this canonical crossroad!