La Môme|La Vie en RoseA wonder of a bio-pic in lush, matted reds  June 13,
2007 3:03:02 PM
Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf
|
Full of lush, matted reds and spot-on period sets, Olivier Dahan’s bio-pic about French chanteuse Edith Piaf is a scrumptious wonder. As Piaf, Marion Cotillard (last seen as object of desire Fanny Chenal in A Good Year) is a lioness in the guise of a bird, with large, luminescent eyes that serve as wondrous windows into the singer’s troubled soul. Trouble pervades the story, which begins with Piaf collapsing on stage, circa 1959, and then flashes back through the self-destructive boozing, morphine addiction, and irrepressible id. Piaf’s all-consuming songs give the film passion and purpose, the early years in poverty and a brothel touch the heart, but Dahan sweeps perfunctorily by WW2 and Piaf’s relationship with Yves Montand. Marlene Dietrich does get worked in elegantly, as does boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), Piaf’s one true love, who proved one more thorn on the rose.
|
 |
|
- Inside the prize-filled trophy home of a seemingly obsessive-compulsive contest enterer
- The Boston Police investigation of Stephan Cowans led to a wrongful conviction. Was it incompetent — or corrupt?
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Win or lose, Obama's small donors may have already brought a revolution in campaign financing
- Why, in desperate times, we turn to lolcats, twee songs, and mute kittens
- Hopped-up brews are proliferating in Rhode Island, from neighborhood bars to the corner package store
- Inside the prize-filled trophy home of a seemingly obsessive-compulsive contest enterer
- Barack offers America the best chance for a fresh start
- Why, in desperate times, we turn to lolcats, twee songs, and mute kittens
- Media watch
- Meet Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s teeth-baring press secretary
- The ‘poet’s poet’ gets canonized
|
-
Oodles of fun
-
Inadvertent camp
-
No pulse
-
A humorless turd
-
Righteous and garden-fresh
-
Silly confusion
-
Cheap and flimsy
-
Taut, but the pieces don't fit
-
A fruitcake of a film
-
A call to action
|
- Sort of crap
- Torture in the shadows
- The hawk is AIDS
- It seems, you had to be there
- Disinterestedly coughed up
- Lazy, lazy, lazy
- Total makeover madness
- Oodles of fun
- Two directers and still unoriginal
- Love, loniliness, aging, and bad hair
|
|
|
|