PeaceBang

La Vie En Rose: A PeaceBang Review

Now, there’s nothing I love better than a good entertainment bio pic; especially one featuring a super diva like Edith Piaf and the age-old “she came from the streets, lived in a brothel, drank hard, loved hard and had brass lungs to beat the band” variety. But “La Vie En Rose,” except for a marvelous performance by the recently Oscar’d Marion Cotillard, was just not very interesting. Yes, we marvelled at her great characterization of Piaf, we loved the Parisian scenery, we thought her lip-syncing was extraordinarily good, but we were, in the end, unmoved by this story. Why? Because it just seemed an endless, wearying epic of bad luck, more bad luck,sordid characters, a lot of drinking, drugs and hoarse shouting, cliched lines like “I’m gonna be a STAR - THEY can’t keep me DOWN!” and the de rigeur tragic love story.

Maybe it’s a French thing. I was absolutely riveted by “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” the wonderful bio-pic about our own American version of Piaf, Miss Judy Garland, played in the film by Judy Davis. Aside from one really bad fat suit, Davis got into the heart and soul of Garland and made her a force of nature you cared about, whereas with Piaf’s character I just felt she was a rather boring gal who happened to have a really distinctive and strong voice. Yes, we got the whole Svengali scene in “La Vie En Rose” where an abusive mentor breaks Piaf down and gets her to use her arms and her full heart and soul to express l’amour and such, but in the end I felt her a shallow woman, not much there, just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but the will to survive. That isn’t to discredit Miss Cotillard’s exquisite work, but perhaps a critique of the screenplay or the direction.

I think I’ll watch “Me and My Shadows” again soon, just to revel in the amazing performances by Tammy Blanchard (who doesn’t impersonate so much as reincarnate the young Judy) and Judy Davis, and to get all the wringing-hankie dramatic pay-off at the end that I had hoped for from “La Vie En Rose” but didn’t get.