La Vie en Rose (dir. Oliver Dahan, 2007)- Review
The biography of Edith Gassion is tragic enough without dramatic licence: a swift trajectory from birth on the street to sudden death at the age of 47, via a childhood spent in her grandmother’s brothel, youth on the road with her acrobat father, and success, when it came with a vengeance, marred by drugs, illness, and the deaths of her lover and her child, among others. Converting the already potent mythology swirling around Gassion- better known, of course, as Edith Piaf- into the solid form of a biopic might seem a daunting task. Just as in the film, it seems that two forces are needed to bring such an ambitious dream to fruition: stellar talent and expert guidance, delivered by Marion Cotillard and Oliver Dahan respectively.
Dahan, previously known for his critically panned gothic imagining of Tom Thumb, takes a more surreal tone with Piaf, striking the balance between fantasy and realism necessary with a twentieth century legend. “Edith Piaf was the perfect example of what an artist could or should be in the way of mixing life and art together all the time,” Dahan said of his inspiration for the project; life and art blurred in a strikingly similar fashion with the film’s creation and aftermath. Dahan wrote the film for Cotillard, claiming that he chose her for the part before they even met, and refusing to go through a casting process. His star, meanwhile, who had approached the project as a moderately successful French actress who knew little about her subject, was shot to rapturous fame and a Hollywood career by her performance.
Cotillard captures the essential physicality of Edith Piaf: her slightly brittle speaking voice and her thin, pained figure, the basis of a performer constantly transforming with different masks. The inherent contradiction at the heart of the Piaf in the film- a vulnerable, charismatic, childlike mirage of personas- renders her as unknowable to herself as to her audiences.
Dahan's film conveys this with the benefits of a measured pace and a clear emphasis on an overall picture of Piaf: skirting the usual narrative logic of cause and effect, the director sensibly pulls back into a hazier tapestry of tangled emotional forces.
Contrasting vignettes from Piaf’s life bleed into each other with conviction, for her and for the audience: their extremity and vividness impart a dreamlike quality, the paradox of a real, or realistic, experience which seems fantastical in perspective. This illusory quality- the uncanny, uncomfortable return of something familiar in an unfamiliar context- is embodied by Piaf’s lipstick. A recurring smear of garish red over Piaf’s mouth is the most striking visual constant in the film, transforming in impact with the different worlds she finds herself in: a sinister, bloody streak on her face in the brothel; a natural accent to youthful beauty at the cabaret; a sinister welt on a face ghastly with stage makeup as her illness takes hold.
The camerawork follows the narrative’s fractured recollection: lingering on the sky above a carnival where Edith has a vision of the Virgin Mary; dashing through the crooked streets of nineteenth century Paris in pursuit of its subject and her best friend, young women hustling on the corners; switching rapidly between uncomfortable, skewed shots and lush, radiant visions of romance. In film, as in life, the disorienting whirlwind of bliss and misery that revolved around Piaf becomes a thing of beauty.
