by Stephen Leonard

Created on: March 13, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

La Mme, Marion Cotillard's Colorful Portrayal of Edith Piaf's Vie en Rose

Certain French stereotypes refuse to die.
For example: they all love Jerry Lewis.

(French people under the age of 60 have no idea who he is.)

Mimes everywhere.

(France has been mime-free for at least 20 years.)

The men all wear berets.

(You'll see a hundred New York Yankees caps here before you see a man wearing a beret.)

One more: wherever you go, Edith Piaf's hauntingly beautiful La Vie en Rose' plays in the background.

The quintessential French ballad, which translates roughly as My Life in Pink', that Piaf wrote in 1945 may not be as ubiquitous as it was in post-war France, but thanks to a new film about her life, that song and others to which she gave life have seen a popular resurgence.

Olivier Dahan's La Mme, starring Marion Cotillard as Piaf, is a much-anticipated love song to the legendary songstress.

Cotillard, who played a poignant supporting role in Tim Burton's Big Fish, slips her 5'6" body into Piaf's 4'8" frame and gets lost among the layers.

In Cotillard's Piaf, the viewer sees a timid girl who speaks the slurred, sometimes wholly inarticulate Parigot' patois of the streets, yet can light up a stage with a richly inimitable, emotive voice.

Cotillard carries the film, aided by a solid supporting cast, including Grard Depardieu (nearly as much as a French clich as mimes and berets, but still a formidable actor) and newcomer Pauline Burlet, who plays a 10-year-old Piaf and nearly steals the show in a scene where she discovers her voice for the first time on the streets of Paris, singing a soulful, impromptu version of La Marseillaise to rapt passers-by.

An icon in France even more than 40 years after her death, Edith Giovanna Gassion was born in the slums of Belleville, in Paris, in 1915.

Her childhood and adolescence reads like something out of Les Misrables:
Abandoned by her crazy mother.

Partially raised by her paternal grandmother, who ran a brothel in Normandy.

Reunited with her father, a street contortionist in Paris.

Started singing on the streets as part of her father's act.

Discovered by a rich cabaret owner.

That cabaret owner, Louis Leple (Depardieu in the movie), turned the little street waif into La Mme Piaf', which translates into The Sparrow Kid'.

While her nickname sounds like something more suitable for a featherweight boxer, she became an instant success in 1930s Paris.

Then, just as soon as she had reached the top, her life came crashing down again, with the murder of her mentor

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