Cotillard's riveting performance, distinctive gestures and defiantly wounded body language without ever descending into mere impersonation. It's sometimes wrenching to watch, but it's too gripping to turn away from.
La Vie En Rose (2007)
Tomatometer
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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
Somewhere between shooting and post-production the film got chopped into tiny, bit-sized pieces reshuffled to such a degree that it becomes hard to follow the narration.
La Vie en Rose is a life seen through a glass tinted darkly, with Cotillard glittering fiercely before the light goes out.
Cotillard is capable of taking something ordinary and transforming it into something special, and that is exactly what she does in La Vie En Rose.
Marion Cotillard delivers a tour de force as legendary singer Édith Piaf.
It's the role of an actress' lifetime, and Marion Cotillard pretty much knocks it out of the park.
Marion Cotillard is astonishing as the troubled singer in a technically virtuosic and emotionally resonant performance that elevates the material from a somewhat episodic melodrama into something strange and riveting.
A movie that delves into an icon's life and comes out with something unexpected -- the essence of the woman's art and soul.
Cotillard's performance is worth the watch -- particularly for the way she responds to the thankless task of sympathetically depicting the less-than-appealing caricature Piaf becomes toward the end of her life at 47.
A sweepingly melodramatic and, in [director] Dahan's words, 'tragic, romantic blockbuster' of a movie that not only captures the (soap) operatic life of its subject with unflinching honesty but refuses to see her any other way.
What's truly uncanny is the way Cotillard makes you feel as though you are seeing a life not just recreated, but lived. She portrays Piaf as a willful, pathetic, substance-abusing diva, who is also charming, touching and tragically vulnerable.
Cotillard's impersonation of Piaf at different ages is periodically moving but as a whole the performance is no great success. You can't connect the dots between these women. This teenager is this young star is this old woman?
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.
More a visual-aural poem about Piaf than a definitive bio-epic of Piaf's complex life story.
France's waiflike songbird Edith Piaf gets an involving cinematic treatment by director Oliver Dahan that resembles her messy and traumatic life.
La Vie En Rose operates in a mode of excellence that ultimately becomes more concerned with exploring itself than the subject at hand.
Keeping the film, with its unusual pendulum-like plotting, at an even keel is rather difficult, but director Olivier Dahan manages to do it.
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.
Unlike its subject matter, there's just nothing spectacular or unique about Rose.
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