Comparing this Film about Piaf to a Play about Piaf

Rating: 6/10 (13 March 2013)

I have long heard of this film, since it had won the Oscar Best Actress prize for lead actress Marion Cotillard for her total embodiment of the central character, French singer Edith Piaf. Oddly though, I never really got to watch this movie until now. It was only because I had just seen an amazing stage production called "Piaf," a play written by Pam Gems in 1978. This play introduced me to Piaf as a most dramatic and tragic character. I felt compelled to finally watch this movie "La Vie en Rose" and compare notes.
Thankfully for the play, I was able to get the flow of the whole story, despite the technique employed by the film director Olivier Dahan of telling her story non-linearly, in erratic flashbacks. Some of the flashbacks would inexplicably merge into main story which may confuse a lot of viewers who have no knowledge of Piaf's life story. If you knew how the story goes in the first place though, his story telling style choices may actually come across as artistic.
Unlike the play, this movie tells a lot about Edith's sad and eventful childhood. This part of her life would include interesting tidbits about being in the circus, as well as going blind with her sight restored by what seemed to be a miracle by her patroness Therese of the Child Jesus. These details of course was beyond the scope of the play. The play though spent significant time to tell about Piaf's activities during World War II, as well as about her second and last husband, Theo Sarapo. The latter was mentioned in passing by Piaf on her deathbed. On the other hand, the film totally skipped these two important episodes of Piaf's checkered life.
But both in the movie and play, the music of Piaf is front and center. In the film, while Marion Cotillard perfected the stance, facial expression and gestures of Piaf, she only lip-synched to the original recordings or recordings done by a sound-alike. The stage Piaf though had to sing LIVE with bravura with every performance. The final song "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" was a truly a spectacular showstopper in both film and play as sung in French. However the film thankfully had English subtitles to tell me what the song really meant, and I saw how much meaning the song had to Piaf's life as whole at that point.
The eventful life of Madame Edith Piaf is truly a winning acting piece for any actress. With the film and the play, I witnessed both actresses transform into Piaf. Lucky for Cotillard that she just needed to do this once right to be printed on film, the actress in the play had the additional challenge and difficulty to do repeated performances of this very physically and vocally draining role. In any case, both this biopic and the play will have you interested to listen more to the music of Piaf. Fortunately for us in the age of Youtube, we can also check out video recordings of the real Piaf in action, and we will marvel more about how these talented actresses portrayed her so convincingly.