An Interesting Case

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2010)

I might have rated this movie a little high, but I have my reasons. "La Vie en Rose", as a movie, is very jumbled and kind of messy. While the constant time jumps are interesting, they don't often work and most of the beginning scenes of the movie that contain Edith Piaf's earlier years, aren't up to par with the later scenes in the movie. I had little interest in the beginning of the film and became more intrigued as we got to the last half of the film.
Most of the reason for the higher rating is because of Marion Cotillard, who gives one of the best performances of all time as Edith Piaf. Even though she doesn't do her own singing, she still has so much weight in her non-singing scenes and does an impeccable job at the lip-syncing. Without her performance, the movie would fall flat completely and it is her performance that keeps the movie afloat on many occasions and in my case, kept me intrigued enough to sit through the film as I found her to be completely astonishing. This is a film I highly recommend STRICTLY because of Cotillard's performance and not the film itself. I will attach a warning that film is very hard to follow at times and loses steam quite often, but that performance makes it worth it. Without such a STUNNING performance as Cotillard's was, I might have given this film a 5.