Marion Cotillard All the Way

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2007)

The director, editor, and cinematographer seem all to have been too excited by their project to have been as judicious actually as they needed. I understand wanting and even needing to go beyond conventions but sadly they do not; what they do is show up the current trends at an extreme that is highly annoying: the hand-held camera will shake, but it's ridiculous to what degree it's allowed to here, specially in the scenes of Edith's childhood--and it doesn't exactly accentuate the instability portrayed as it does primarily the intrusiveness of the cameraman (gee, did we need to be knocked over the head to get how thrown off and helpless a child could feel in all that instability about her?); the whole is so consistently under-lit and the final look so markedly contrasty that so much is only so obscured and overwhelmed by such gross effect (some rather fine sets are brought up only to point to just how much the hampering), making it impossible to disregard the heavy hand behind it all (that "hand" doesn't only creep it just keeps clobbering away); the extravagant editing doesn't exactly leave one confounded as to the relationship of events in and out of time's direct thread, no, but neither do you sit back and ride, and the jolts just don't enhance anything more than attention to the editorial willfulness, which begins to verge on spite (I can take sloppy as an aesthetic, but this is not exactly that either, and is closer, again, to just being to no great effect)...
Enough: on the whole, as a finished thing, an artifact, this film is a lot less than enthralling, suffice it to say. There are, however, some brief moments very well directed, allowed to reach the audience to some degree deeply (it must be said what is allowed is the PERFORMANCES to reach, mainly the main actor's, but more of that later on)--if only they weren't cut up and pasted along so brutishly!--and a montage, when Piaf goes on before a large concert-hall audience for the first time using the whole of her performance apparatus (her hands, her facial expression, precise articulation, not just her voice raw, all of which we have been shown her painfully coached to exploit) that is not merely atypical, but exquisite, and lovely; it bears some description:
In lieu of the I'll-show-you bravura from the performer's point of view, or in sympathy with the performer, what you get is more akin to the audience's gasp-and-stop, breathlessness and suspension: the sounds of the narrative (the murmuring, shuffling, the applause, the orchestra) shut off, and off-screen music, cinematic, slow, contemplative, luring, transporting, comes on for a slowed-down montage of Piaf on the proscenium from first song to final applause of her act, varying close-ups on her face, "trapped" behind the microphone, as she begins to emote, as she emotes with aplomb; on her hands, as they first start to rise, still rather clenched, away from her sides, as they carry the singer away--AND the audience....It's beautiful. Triumphant indeed.
But whatever the film is, whether it's a beautiful artifact or not, it works mostly as the framework for the stunning portrayal of Piaf by the amazing Marion Cotillard (who IS she?)--the absolute magic carpet ride in the jumble-tumble of this film; it's she who keeps you when the film is otherwise annoying. There are other performances worthy of note, but--well--BIG but--she is the force here the way Edith Piaf must have been onstage and in her own life as an adult (it's as perfect a symmetry, it seems, between Piaf and Cotillard here in a way, as it can get; as slavishness on the actress's part it is then not). The poor prayerful Piaf seems to get only more of herself, of her own intensity (why NOT call it her demon?) back for every prayer to her sweet Jesus, to her sweet Saint Therese, to intercede with fate on her behalf or her particular beloved's. You cannot schematize life in this way IN life and get away with your belief intact. But the interpretation is tempting, and in art especially...IF you can pull it off. It's an interpretation that requires more than mere statement, or suggestion: it's got to be delivered, shown, and Marion Cotillard--well, who IS she, ANYWAY, indeed!