[Director Dahan's] approach draws more attention to the filmmaking than it does to the life. Dahan seems to believe that chronology is bourgeois: Pure storytelling is all fine and dandy, but he wants us to know he's making art.
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
La Vie en Rose honors Piaf's life by refusing to sentimentalize it. The film is long and sometimes harrowing, but also enthralling.
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.
Equating an artist's life with her art is often a dubious dramatic ploy, but it makes sense in La Vie En Rose because the content of Piaf's life and the power of her singing are all of a piece.
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.
Marion Cotillard is a knockout in this scintillating and soulful musical bio.
Hurtling and impassioned, driven by some of the greatest popular music ever recorded, this wildly overripe and unkempt biopic is a true experience.
The movie, the voice of Piaf, and a performance that turns Marion Cotillard into a great new star shimmer with the kind of beauty, power, intensity and visual opulence you might want to experience again and again.
Marion Cotillard's staggering performance is the main event in this Edith Piaf biopic.
Minimizing Piaf's wonderful music diminishes an extraordinary performance by Cotillard. I wanted a concert with the story and didn't get it. Edith would be disappointed.
An astonishing performance by Marion Cotillard as the legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf whose life was a rollercoaster ride of exhilarating highs and incredibly depressing lows.
Edith Piaf's tidal emotional vulgarity and brutish commitment to the most sentimental chansons is captured accurately and even irresistibly in La Vie En Rose.
Like most cinema chanteuse stories, Olivier Dahan's 'La Vie en Rose' pretties up the sordid, but this film is good for its breed.
Impressively mounted and involving pic should be greeted with applause.
Bleak vagabond melodrama made extraordinary by Marion Cotillard's mesmerizing performance. She doesn't play Piaf, she embodies her, lip-sync'ing to recordings.
All I can say is that the total experience left me in tears, albeit also with a feeling of total emotional exhaustion.
Too many shifts back and forth in time but Marion Cotillard gives a towering performance as Edith Piaf.
One of those rare cinematic happenings where every aspect of the production--from key casting and scripting down to the minutest period details--is done to perfection.
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