A spectacular mess

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2007)

Take this down.
Edith Piaf (1915-1963), born Edith Giovanna Gassion to a former café singer and a street acrobat. Abandoned by her parents, she lived for a time in a brothel run by her paternal grandmother. From three to seven years old, she allegedly went blind as a result of meningitis, but later recovered her sight after going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Therese. At 14 she joined her father in street performances, during which she sang in public for the first time.
She later went her own way as a street singer along with her half-sister Simone Berteaut (nicknamed Momone). In 1935 she was discovered by nightclub owner Louis Leplee, who gave her the nickname La Mome Piaf (the little sparrow). Her career was momentarily derailed after Leplee was murdered, allegedly by gangsters she had previous ties with. To save her career, she turned to Raymond Asso, who gave her the stage name Edith Piaf and commissioned Marguerite Monnot to write songs for her. Monnot became a life-long friend and collaborator.
During this period she rose to prominence as one of France's most popular entertainer and toured all over the world. However, she initially met with little success in the US until a glowing review by a prominent New York critic launched her to fame in America. Her greatest performances were at the Paris Olympia concert hall, the most famous venue in Paris.
The great love of her life was the heavyweight world champion Marcel Cerdan, who was a legend in France in his own right. After a car crash in 1951, she became addicted to morphine and alcohol, two addictions she could never shake for the remaining years of her life. She died at 47 of liver cancer. Did you get that? Good, because unless you're from France, you'll need all the above information to make heads or tails of La Môme (aka La Vie en Rose), a movie about the life of Edith Piaf. The film pingpongs in a roughly chronological fashion from her early years to her later years with little narrative logic or thematic sense. One problem I have with the film is that it assumes that you already know all about Piaf's life and are watching the film simply to see recreations of key moments in her life  a sort of greatest hits if you will. Or maybe a Behind the Music special. Watching La Môme, you would never understand what made Edith Piaf a French icon.
Which leads to my major problem with the film: the filmmakers seem determined to present Edith Piaf in the most unflattering light possible. Quite apart from her extraordinary voice, what you would learn about her from La Môme is that she is: an alcoholic and a junkie, a spoiled, arrogant diva, and a home-wrecker. She was also, unfortunately, quite ugly, a fact that Piaf herself readily acknowledges in the film. By the time she was in her forties, the film portrays her as looking easily twenty years older, with a ravaged face and an old woman's stoop. Did the woman have no redeeming qualities whatsoever?
Marion Cotillard really deserves some kind of an award for not downplaying the ugly qualities of this supremely unpleasant figure. Unfortunately, the filmmakers also seem determined to cut anything resembling a performance from this film. Quite apart from the physical impersonation, there is nothing to Cotillard's performance that would tell you anything about Piaf's character.
The best parts of the film are those involving Piaf's early life, which have all the fascination of a Dickens novel. But once Cotillard takes over as the adult Piaf, watch out, the film starts to make little sense. There are even some puzzling artistic choices, such as the decision to play a key concert scene without vocals, backed only by the score. Even worse, the scene is further reduced to a series of quick close-ups of Piaf's lips and hands, inter-cut with shots of the audience reaction.
If you have to watch the film, make sure you read up on Piaf first before you go. Oh, and enjoy the songs, which are mainly actual recordings of Piaf herself. They're really the only reason to watch La Môme.