Here's Looking At You, Kid

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2007)

Before this movie was screened yesterday the director, Olivier Dahan, was introduced to the audience. His appearance was as undistinguished as his CV which consists mainly of music videos and Purple Rivers II, in short a forty year old apparently doing his damnedest to eclipse Pete Doherty as a tragic joke. My initial reaction - which he gave me no reason to change - was 'what a t**t'. Just for a split second I wondered if the word of mouth was perhaps wrong, how could someone who looked and behaved like a refugee from the Betty Ford Clinic make even a half-decent movie.
The answer is: Marion Cotillard. She takes the film by the scruff of the neck and transcends the inept Direction. Forget the Oscar, the Cesar, the Bafta, Golden Globe, they're going to have to CREATE a new Award for this performance. A girl I know in Paris saw this when it was released there on Valentine's Day and wrote me that 'Cotillard doesn't play Piaf, she IS Piaf'. How right she was; Cotillard is Piaf in the same way that Gloria Swanson WAS Norma Desmond, in a way that Larry Parks was NOT Jolson or Cary Grant was NOT Cole Porter or, coming nearer to home, Fanny Ardant was not QUITE Maria Callas.
The thing is I've never been much of a Piaf fan, I could take her or leave her but Cotillard makes it crystal clear just who and what Piaf WAS, a one-off, an incredible talent with a private life that sucked. One of a triumvirate if you will with Judy Garland and Billie Holiday. They had a shot at Lady Day and it was an honorable shot but light years short of what Cotillard brings to La Mome. If they ever find an actress who can BE Judy Garland as Cotillard is Edith Piaf the result will be a movie to die for. Chronology is perhaps the wrong word to describe what at times resembles one Magic Mushroom too many and anyone unfamiliar with Piaf's life will be better not attempting to negotiate the labyrinth but just wallow in Cotillard's artistry. Dahan has made some bizarre choices; he mentions Paul Meurisse (a distinguished French stage and screen actor who co-starred with Piaf in a play written by Jean Cocteau but who is virtually unknown outside France and even within it by anyone under forty) and shows Michel Emer (an equally distinguished French composer of 'pop' songs in the forties and fifties but again totally unknown today) yet omits the one person once close to Piaf who IS still remembered, Yves Montand, who appeared with her at the Moulin Rouge and the film Etoile Sans lumiere and became her lover; equally bizarrely Montand gets a mention when, towards the end of her life, she is playing the Olympia, a venue where both she AND Montand enjoyed some of their greatest triumphs; she is very frail and her entourage are listing celebrities in the audience 'Montand is here', 'Montand? I didn't know he was in France', 'He came for you, Edith'. This is meaningless unless you know that Piaf dropped Montand as a lover once his popularity equalled her own and later claimed to have 'discovered' him, both resulting in an estrangement which would give more meaning to Montand being present at Olympia. Cotillard is augmented by some fine French actors, none more distinguished than Gerard Depardieu in a cameo as Louis Leplee who heard a kid singing in the street, hired her for a cabaret he ran and christened her 'Piaf'; Jean-Paul Rouve is her father, Manu Seigner Titine, the prostitute who befriends her, Montand's step-daughter Catherine Allegret is also on hand and Slyvie Testud and Pascal Greggory shine as lifelong friend and manager. There is one masterstroke; when she plays the Olympia for the first time, she is racked by stage fright and has to be coaxed on to the stage. Dahan opens on the microphone center stage, looking out at the audience (a schtick he's overly fond of but here it's okay) Piaf walks out and stands with her back to us. The orchestra strikes up and in a Reverse angle we see her mouth opening but no sound comes out. The whole song is played mute and the effect comes from her growing confidence, the orchestra slowly building to a crescendo and the audience growing ecstatic. For a film about a singer there's not that much song; snatches of her signature songs are heard behind scenes of her childhood but seldom do we hear a song in its entirety, just enough of Milord, La Vie En Rose to whet appetites and inexplicably not one word of Hymn d'Amour. Ultimately it's Cotillard's triumph, one minute an arthritic bundle of rags the next a Radiant young woman who IS beautiful because she makes you BELIEVE she is. Magnifique.