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La Vie En Rose details the extraordinary life of Edith Piaf and by extraordinary, one means to say, extraordinarily depressing. The film does what many have come to expect from French Cinema, but somehow puts a different spin on things. Many French filmmakers are hopeless romantics who believe life is some sort of exercise we are all forced into. It means very little, especially less without love. The film tells the story of the rise and fall of Edith Piaf, a famous French singer from the 40s and 50s, and chronicles such a French artist with said disposition.

Edith was born a sickly child and grew up in a whorehouse. Her mother abandoned her and as soon as she began to develop a sense of home, her father whisked her away to join the circus. Upon her rise to fame she battled drugs and alcohol, all the while still being hampered by sickness since childhood. Uplifting this film is not. As soon as the audience begins to identify or start to develop some sense of hope, her life takes another horrible downturn and kicks you right in the stomach. Edith was an amazing singer, but she doesn't come off as that great of a person. She seemingly lucks into fame and treats people with little respect. This is not your Ray or your Walk the Line, where directors try and shape a vulnerable artist and gloss over his shortcomings. Edith's life was a series of ailments and problems, and she simply tried to overcome them in order to keep singing.

The editing in the film is arguably either very clever or poorly put together. The film jumps around whizzing back and forth through time. It isn't difficult to follow, but it really seems to be done to create some sort of mounting emotion and it works, for the most part. At the end of the film, flashbacks to scenes and people we haven't met or heard from are thrown in to create a dramatic crescendo which causes the film to stumble a bit. An audience doesn't have any connection to these moments, and therefore makes them hard to swallow, but other than that this is a delightfully dreary biopic.

Mario Cotillard (A Good Year, Love Me If You Dare) delivers Edith Piaf well. It isn't to say she plays her expertly, but she seems to be embodying an entirely different person that bares no semblance to anything she has ever done. She plays Edith from her late teenage years up until her death, and each stage of characterization couldn't be more believable. The supporting cast is all amazing, but this is Cotillard's show and her performance is career defining.

La Vie En Rose is something worth sitting through it's got amazing music, romance, and a truly tragic tale of an artist who couldn't control herself. It's terribly sad but it's also spectacular to see someone live a life so full. Edith refused to be bogged down, and she kept demanding everything from life, even when life began to give up on her.

Learn more about this author, Greg Maclennan.
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