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Tag Marion Cotillard
La Vie En Rose
I was tickled that Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar last night. Of the nominated actresses, her performance as Edith Piaf was the only one we actually saw, but I have to say that she was indeed superb as The Little Sparrow. Frankly, I was SURE that Ellen Page was going to win for “Juno”. Page is the new hot thing, while Cotillard is mostly unknown in Hollywood. And of the other three, Blanchett was reprising the same role she already won an Oscar for, and Julie Christie and Laura Linney were both in movies nobody saw.
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The makeup people on this movie did a great job of making Marion Cotillard look like Edith Piaf. She’s actually much prettier as Piaf than Piaf was in real life, but the resemblance is good, and she did a great job lip synching the rapid lyrics in the musical scenes. In the later parts of the film, during Piaf’s illnesses and struggles with drug addiction, the physical transformation is equally stark. Edith Piaf died in her early 40s from cancer and from a life lived very hard, and in the later scenes of the film you would think an 80-year-old woman was playing the dying singer.
Most Americans today have no idea who Edith Piaf was or why she was famous, but in France she remains a huge cultural icon. This film, which was made in France with a French cast, crew and director, was clearly intended for French domestic distribution rather than American distribution. The story of Piaf’s life is well-known to the French, and much of the film plays like a “greatest hits” biography, making sure to cover the highlights everyone knows. Other famous French cultural and social figures of the day whiz through the film without introduction or exposition, since everyone in France would immediately recognize such famous people, much the way we would automatically recognize minor American celebrities. I myself was able to guess at a few, and I would bet that the audience we saw the film with in Cambridge might have been able to pick out some as well, but your typical moviegoer at the multiplex would have no clue.
Because this film is about a legend, it suffers from a bit of kid-glove treatment about her. Her illegitimate daughter, whom she bore when she was a very young woman herself, is treated like a big secret in the film, though it was not during her life. The film does show her wild partying, but only hints at her addiction to heroin and stimulants. It breezes through some of her many affairs to focus more on her relationship to boxer Marcel Cerdan, whom she married. And it completely ignores the war years of Occupied France, during which she was practically a national hero, but after which she was deeply criticized for her apparent cooperation with the Germans. Her decision to go to America was in no small part to get away from the furor, even though she hated America and was not well-received here either.
The film made its tour through American movie theaters quite a long time ago, and even then only really in big cities that have foreign film houses, so you probably won’t get the chance to see it in a theater, even with the “Oscar bounce”. But it is on DVD, and I would recommend it, particularly in light of last night’s awards.