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La Vie En Rose (2007)
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Reviews Counted:142
Fresh:105
Rotten:37
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: The set design and cinematography are impressive, but the real achievement of La Vie en Rose is Marion Cotillard's mesmerizing, wholly convincing performance as Edith Pilaf.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language and thematic elements.
Runtime: 2 hrs 21 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Theatrical Release:Jun 8, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $10,126,918
Synopsis: According to Marlene Dietrich, chanteuse Edith Piaf's voice was "the soul of Paris." This French drama explores the often troubled life of the singer as her fame took her from the City of Lights to... According to Marlene Dietrich, chanteuse Edith Piaf's voice was "the soul of Paris." This French drama explores the often troubled life of the singer as her fame took her from the City of Lights to America to the South of France. Abandoned by her mother, Piaf grew up in her grandmother's brothel and her father's circus, which is hardly the fun one might imagine. While singing on the streets of Paris as a teen, Piaf (played as an adult by Marion Cotillard, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) is discovered by club owner Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu), and this chance encounter changes the woman's life. Her powerful voice takes her all over the globe, but it can't guard her from the pain and suffering she can't avoid. As Piaf, Cotillard is mesmerizing. She fully inhabits the singer's ivory skin, crafting a character that never descends into caricature or camp. She lip syncs to Piaf's legendary voice, but the performance is seamless. Like WALK THE LINE and RAY, this biopic creates a fascinating picture of an artist whose songs only begin to reflect the singer's painful life. But director-writer Olivier Dahan (LA VIE PROMISE) doesn't take the traditional biopic route with LA VIE EN ROSE. Instead, the film jumps between various moments in the singer's life, with little concern for linear narrative. Cotillard is just as adept at playing the teenage Piaf as she is the songbird on her deathbed at the age of 47, and it's her amazing performance that makes LA VIE EN ROSE worth seeing. [More]
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Gerard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Gerard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner, Clotilde Courau, Jean Paul Rouve, Marc Barbe, Catherine Allégret, Manon Chevallier, Pauline Burlet, Elisabeth Commelin, Marc Gannot
Director: Oliver Dahan
Director: Oliver Dahan
Screenwriter: Olivier Dahan
Producer: Alain Goldman
Composer: Christopher Gunning
Studio: Picturehouse
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Reviews for La Vie En Rose
It is hard not to admire Ms. Cotillard for the discipline and ferocity she brings to the role. But it is equally hard to be completely swept up in Mr. Dahan’s dutiful, functional and ultimately superficial film.
The details of the composition, the fluidity of the camera's movement and the magical elision between personal grief and "performed" grief are so confidently organised that one detects the shadow of a much subtler film. I wish that we could have seen it.
La Vie en Rose provides a tantalizing introduction to the tiny dynamo that was Edith Piaf but it's far from being a definitive or enlightening portrait of the famous singer.
Vivid and emotional--but also disjointed and melodramatic--Olivier Dahan's Edith Piaf biopic ... is all about Marion Cotillard's passionate performance.
We're given drama and despair at a distance . . . As Piaf, though, Marion Cotillard is remarkable. . . . but Dahan's work never bridges the bitter and sweet chords.
Compelling but punishing -- an artful ordeal. The best way to process it may be as unintended camp, rolling your eyes in amazement at its litany of misery and heaps of histrionics.
Unlike its subject matter, there's just nothing spectacular or unique about Rose.
La Vie en Rose is lucky to have Cotillard to hold things together, because it is constantly threatening to implode.
Cotillard's lip-synching of her character singing didn't do it for me.
La Vie En Rose trudges dutifully from one costumed 'defining' event to the next, building to a kind of Piaf theme park that plays out like a bad parody of Dickens or Balzac.
No regrets for Cottilard's dedication, but plenty for the clichéd pap of the biopic genre
The film does get a little overwhelmingly dark. This may be an accurate picture of what Piaf's life was like, but watching nearly 2 1/2 hours of it is a bit much.
Ms. Cotillard [is] the movie's centerpiece, and its end-all, be-all. It's a spectacular one-woman show, but not really a movie.
Marion Cotillard tears up all the available scenery in this overblown, achronological biopic of French pop singer Edith Piaf.
But at 140 minutes, the biopic is luxuriously long and commits one sin that would have been an anathema to a cabaret artist like Piaf - the lack of variety.
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