Before I heard of this film, I must admit I knew very little about Edith Piaf, one of the most beloved French singers in history. I had heard her work, which is featured many films, but I knew nothing of her dramatic life. Olivier Dahan's biopic does what all great biopics should do — get inside who the person was and share with us what they did that made them special. As I finished watching this film, I was transformed from a Piaf novice into a Piaf fan.
Edith Piaf, played as an adult by Marion Cotillard (LOVE ME IF YOU DARE), in her 47 years on Earth lived the lives of 10 people. Raised in poverty with her fledging singer mother, she was taken by her father, on leave from WWI, to live with her grandmother, a madam at a brothel. There she fell under the loving care of a prostitute named Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner, FRANTIC). When Edith falls ill and almost goes blind, Titine takes her to the shrine of Saint Therese to pray. When the war is over, Edith's father takes her from the only stable home she has known to travel with him in the circus. Later, her father strikes out on his own, but finds that his solo contortionist act is less of a draw then the powerful vocal skills of his young daughter.
As Piaf grows to a young woman, she hustles the streets with her best friend Momone (Sylvie Testud, LA CAPTIVE), singing for spare change. One day, the cabaret impresario Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu, GREEN CARD) discovers her, inviting her to sing for him where she makes an instant impression. With fame and money, Piaf still can't escape the streets where she came from, which will lead to her falling into the gutter once again. While she was on top, the composer Raymond Asso (Marc Barbe) invites her to work with him and she takes his offer when she has nothing else left. The harsh musician is a taskmaster who doesn't fawn over Piaf's natural, but unpolished, talents. Over the years, Piaf will gain growing fame and find love with the married heavyweight champion boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins). But as things seem to go for Piaf, tragedy is always around the corner and her years of living in the fast lane quickly catch up with her. However, some secrets of her past are not revealed until her deathbed.
Dahan co-wrote the film with Isabelle Sobelman, crafting a perfectly paced tale that skillfully jumps forward and back through Piaf's life, while never losing the viewer. The time jumps add a sense of foreboding that build up to Piaf's triumphant return to the stage for the Olympia. Tragic tales of artists are quite common, so it takes skilled filmmakers to breathe new life into them. Dahan does so with directing decisions so original that they are daring when one really thinks about it. Pay attention to the scene where Piaf performs her first big concert hall performance. Dahan drops out Piaf's voice. Seems like a strange thing to do for a film about a singer. But it turns out to be a stroke of genius.
Another stroke of genius is the performance of Marion Cotillard. It's the best female performance of 2007, I've seen. She doesn't just mimic Piaf; she becomes Piaf. From the mannerisms to the singer's soul, Cotillard allows the character to be as she is without worrying about making us like her. She is often a prima dona or rude, but she is always alive. She makes us believe in why Piaf became the woman she became on an emotional level. Her transformation from the young vibrant Piaf to the hunched dying woman is as remarkable as classic screen transformations such as DeNiro in RAGING BULL or Charlize Theron in MONSTER.
With so many great biopics about musicians, such as WALK THE LINE or RAY, arriving in theaters in recent years, it's surprising to find the best of them all about someone I knew very little about going in. This is done so with a thoughtful script, innovative direction and a central performance so great it becomes a classic the second the credits begin to roll.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
