La Vie en rose (film)
Encyclopedia
La Vie En Rose
La Vie En Rose (la vi ɑ̃ ʁoz, literally Life in Pink; released in France as La Môme, referring to Piaf's nickname "La Môme Piaf," (meaning "baby sparrow, birdie, little sparrow") is a 2007 French biographical film
about the life of French chanteuse Édith Piaf
co-written, and directed by Olivier Dahan
. Marion Cotillard
stars as Piaf. The title La Vie en Rose comes from Piaf's signature song
. The film won five Césars, including one for Best Actress, and Cotillard won an Academy Award for her performance, marking the first time an Oscar had been given for a French-language role. She is also the first French actress to win a Comedy or Musical Golden Globe for a foreign language role. It also became the first French film to win more than one Oscar; the other being for Makeup.
, many of which the audience ultimately learns are evoked as flashbacks
from within Édith's own memory as she dies. Despite the fractured narrative approach, the film is anchored at the beginning by predominance of elements from her childhood, and at the end with the events prior to and surrounding her death, poignantly juxtaposed by a performance of her song, "Non, je ne regrette rien
" (No, I don't regret a thing).
The film opens with Édith as a small child in 1918, crying on a stoop after being teased by other children on the streets of Paris. Her mother stands across the alley singing, busking for change. Édith's mother writes to her child's father, the acrobat
, who is fighting in the trenches of World War I battlefields, informing him that she is leaving Édith with her mother so she can pursue the life of the artist. Her father returns to Paris and scoops up a sick Édith, then in turn leaves the child with his own mother, who is a madam of a bordello in Normandy
. Now living as a child in a brothel, surrounded by the often brutal and demeaning business of prostitution, Édith is taken under the wing of the women there, especially Titine, a young troubled redhead who becomes emotionally attached to the little girl. Titine sings to, plays with, and tenderly cares for Édith through travails including an episode of keratitis-induced blindness that is healed through their prayers to St. Thérèse.
Years later, Édith's father returns for her. Despite anguished protests from both Titine and Édith, he takes the child away to join him as he works as a circus
acrobat. As Édith is outside cleaning up after dinner one night, she watches a fire eater practicing, and in the flames sees an apparition of St Thérèse, who assures her that she will always be with her—a belief that she carries with her for the rest of her life.
When Édith is nine years old, her father leaves the circus after an argument with the manager and begins performing on the streets of Paris. During a lackluster performance of her father's contortionist skills while Édith holds a hat for coins, a passerby asks if Édith is part of the show and, with prompting by her father to "do something" so the half-interested audience doesn't leave, she spontaneously sings "La Marseillaise
" with raw emotion, mesmerizing the street crowd.
Years later, a nightclub owner named Louis Leplée
approaches Édith while she sings (and drinks) on the streets of Montmartre
for supper money with her friend Mômone. He invites her to his club for an informal audition. Impressed, he hires her, after creating for diminutive Édith a stage surname of Piaf, a colloquialism for sparrow.
Soon, Leplée is shot dead, suspected by the police to be due to Édith's connections to the mafia
through the pimp who has demanded a large portion of her street singing earnings. When Édith next attempts a show at a low grade cabaret
, she is jeered and shouted off the stage by a hostile crowd, but she soon meets her next mentor—Raymond Asso
, a songwriter and accompanist. He enlivens her performances by teaching her to gesture with her "great hands" while singing, and works with her on enunciation and other aspects of stage presence, including how to battle her initial fierce bouts of stage fright
that almost prevent her from taking the stage for her first music hall performance.
While performing in New York City, Édith meets Marcel Cerdan
, a fellow French national who is a boxer
competing for the World Champion title. Though she quickly learns from him that he has a wife, who runs their pig farm while he's away, Édith tells Mômone that she is falling in love with Marcel. The affair that ensues, while supposedly secret, results in the playing of "La Vie En Rose" being played for Marcel wherever he goes. The morning after Édith has persuaded Marcel to fly to her from Paris to join her in New York, she wakes up to his kiss. She joyfully hurries to get him coffee and her gift to him of a watch, while she mocks and exasperatedly shouts at her oddly subdued entourage as they listlessly stand around her apartment. They finally break the news to her that Marcel's plane crashed. Édith hysterically searches for the ghost of Marcel that was lounging on her bed just a few moments before, crying out the name of her lost lover.
The narrative bookends these scenes from Édith's middle life with repeated vignettes of an aged-looking Édith with frizzy red hair, being nursed and tended to. She spends much of her time sitting in a chair by the lakeside, and when she stands, she has the stooped posture and slowness of a much older person. Another set of fractured memories shows Édith with short curly hair, plastered to her face like she is feverish, singing on stage and collapsing while she tries to sing, a moment when Édith herself realizes that her body is betraying her, when she is hosting a party at a Parisian bistro, and topples a bottle of champagne because of her developing arthritis
, and to the morphine addiction that ultimately plays a large role in her demise, as she injects the drug with a young lover in her bedroom.
After her husband persuades her to enter rehabilitation for her addiction, she travels to California with him Jacques Pills
and the audience sees the sober but manic-by-nature Édith being driven around in a convertible, laughing, joking, teasing her compatriots and generally being the life of the party, until she takes the wheel and promptly drives into a joshua tree
. The hilarity is uninterrupted as Édith gets out and pretends to hitchhike—the whole episode appearing to be a metaphor for her lifelong frantic efforts to be happy and distracted by entertaining others, through all manner of disasters.
Years later, Piaf, now frail and hunched, squabbles with her entourage about whether or not she will be able to perform at the Olympia
. No one but Édith thinks that she will be ready to attempt the feat, but she ultimately faces this reality herself. Then, a new songwriter and arranger shows up with a song, "Je ne regrette rien
", and Édith exclaims: "You're marvelous! Exactly what I've been waiting for. It's incredible. It's me! That's my life, it's me." She announces that she will indeed perform it at the Olympia.
Memories from prior to and during her last performance, when she collapses onstage, are interwoven through the film, foreshadowing the tragic end to a stellar but prematurely ended stage life. The memories appear to almost haunt Piaf. In one series, prior to what turns out to be her last performance, Édith is finally ready to go onstage after a series of delays, when she asks for the cross necklace that she always wears. As her staff rush away to get it, she sits and, in her quiet solitude, experiences more memories of her past, and after Édith puts on the retrieved cross and shuffles out onto the stage, the film presents more flashbacks as she is singing one of her signature songs, "Je ne regrette rien."
She relives a sunny day on a beach with her knitting
, when an older Édith with an obvious stoop graciously answers the simple and polite questions of an interviewer: what is her favorite color? (blue), her favorite food? (pot roast), and then more poignant questions that she also answers without hesitation, again showing the longings of her life. If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be? "Love." To a young girl? "Love." To a child? "Love."
As though he is carrying a swaddled infant, Louis easily carries Édith, tiny and wasted away at the age of 47, into her bedroom and tucks her into bed, while the subtitle removes any illusions that this is other than the last day of her life. She is afraid. She says she cannot remember things, but has a disjointed series of memories of the kind of small moments that somehow define all our lives more than the "big moments" do—scrambled and fragmentary as a dying person might experience—her mother commenting on her "wild eyes," her father giving her a gift of a doll, and thoughts of her own dead child, Marcelle.
The film ends not with a death scene, which is implied, but with Édith performing "Je ne regrette rien" at the Olympia.
" is performed by child singer Cassandre Berger (lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, who plays the young Édith in the film), and Mistinguett
's "Mon Homme" (My Man) and "Il m'a vue nue" (He saw me naked) (sung in part by Emmanuelle Seigner) also appear. Recordings of Piaf are also used.
The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
countries including Algeria, Monaco, Morocco and Tunisia, the film grossed a total of $42,014,775.
This film became the third-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades (behind Amélie
and Brotherhood of the Wolf
). http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=foreign.htm
, while unimpressed with the film itself, was still rather impressed with Cotillard's performance: "It is hard not to admire Ms. Cotillard for the discipline and ferocity she brings to the role." Carino Chocano of the Los Angeles Times
opined that "Marion Cotillard is astonishing as the troubled singer in a technically virtuosic and emotionally resonant performance..." Richard Nilsen from Arizona Republic was even more enthusiastic, writing "don't bother voting. Just give the Oscar to Marion Cotillard now. As the chanteuse Édith Piaf in La Vie en rose, her acting is the most astonishing I've seen in years."
Critic Mark Kermode
of The Observer
was less keen; while he felt there was much to applaud, there was also "plenty to regret" (punning on Piaf's Je ne regrette rien). Kermode agreed that the source material provided "heady inspiration", and that Cotillard plays everything with "kamikaze-style intensity", but thought the film lacking in structure and narrative, creating "an oddly empty experience".
won seven Best Actress Awards for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose:
Other awards include:
La Vie En Rose (la vi ɑ̃ ʁoz, literally Life in Pink; released in France as La Môme, referring to Piaf's nickname "La Môme Piaf," (meaning "baby sparrow, birdie, little sparrow") is a 2007 French biographical film
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
about the life of French chanteuse Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
co-written, and directed by Olivier Dahan
Olivier Dahan
Olivier Dahan is a French film director and screenwriter. His third directed film, La Vie En Rose, was the first French cinema film ever to win two Academy Awards, including its first acting Oscar in the French language.-Biography:...
. Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
stars as Piaf. The title La Vie en Rose comes from Piaf's signature song
La vie en rose
"La Vie en Rose" was the signature song of French singer Édith Piaf.-Signature song of Édith Piaf:Édith Piaf first popularized La Vie en Rose in 1946. The lyrics were written by Piaf and the melody of the song by "Louiguy" . Initially, Piaf's peers and her songwriting team did not think the song...
. The film won five Césars, including one for Best Actress, and Cotillard won an Academy Award for her performance, marking the first time an Oscar had been given for a French-language role. She is also the first French actress to win a Comedy or Musical Golden Globe for a foreign language role. It also became the first French film to win more than one Oscar; the other being for Makeup.
Plot
The film's narrative structure is a largely non-linear series of key events from the life of Édith PiafÉdith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
, many of which the audience ultimately learns are evoked as flashbacks
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
from within Édith's own memory as she dies. Despite the fractured narrative approach, the film is anchored at the beginning by predominance of elements from her childhood, and at the end with the events prior to and surrounding her death, poignantly juxtaposed by a performance of her song, "Non, je ne regrette rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
"Non, je ne regrette rien" , meaning "No, I'm not sorry for anything", is a French song composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was written in 1956, and is best known through its 1960 recording by Édith Piaf....
" (No, I don't regret a thing).
The film opens with Édith as a small child in 1918, crying on a stoop after being teased by other children on the streets of Paris. Her mother stands across the alley singing, busking for change. Édith's mother writes to her child's father, the acrobat
Acrobatics
Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, as well as many sports...
, who is fighting in the trenches of World War I battlefields, informing him that she is leaving Édith with her mother so she can pursue the life of the artist. Her father returns to Paris and scoops up a sick Édith, then in turn leaves the child with his own mother, who is a madam of a bordello in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
. Now living as a child in a brothel, surrounded by the often brutal and demeaning business of prostitution, Édith is taken under the wing of the women there, especially Titine, a young troubled redhead who becomes emotionally attached to the little girl. Titine sings to, plays with, and tenderly cares for Édith through travails including an episode of keratitis-induced blindness that is healed through their prayers to St. Thérèse.
Years later, Édith's father returns for her. Despite anguished protests from both Titine and Édith, he takes the child away to join him as he works as a circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...
acrobat. As Édith is outside cleaning up after dinner one night, she watches a fire eater practicing, and in the flames sees an apparition of St Thérèse, who assures her that she will always be with her—a belief that she carries with her for the rest of her life.
When Édith is nine years old, her father leaves the circus after an argument with the manager and begins performing on the streets of Paris. During a lackluster performance of her father's contortionist skills while Édith holds a hat for coins, a passerby asks if Édith is part of the show and, with prompting by her father to "do something" so the half-interested audience doesn't leave, she spontaneously sings "La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
" with raw emotion, mesmerizing the street crowd.
Years later, a nightclub owner named Louis Leplée
Louis Leplée
Louis Leplée was a nightclub owner who discovered the French singer Édith Piaf singing on a Paris street corner in 1935. Leplée starred Piaf at the popular Parisian nightspot "Le Gerny" as "La Môme Piaf" ....
approaches Édith while she sings (and drinks) on the streets of Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
for supper money with her friend Mômone. He invites her to his club for an informal audition. Impressed, he hires her, after creating for diminutive Édith a stage surname of Piaf, a colloquialism for sparrow.
Soon, Leplée is shot dead, suspected by the police to be due to Édith's connections to the mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
through the pimp who has demanded a large portion of her street singing earnings. When Édith next attempts a show at a low grade cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
, she is jeered and shouted off the stage by a hostile crowd, but she soon meets her next mentor—Raymond Asso
Raymond Asso
Raymond Asso was a French lyricist.Born in Nice, France, his parents separation saw him leave for Morocco at the age of 15. After his arrival he tried numerous professions, including: shepherd, factory worker, chauffeur and nightclub manager. Between 1916 and 1919 he worked as a Spahi, a type of...
, a songwriter and accompanist. He enlivens her performances by teaching her to gesture with her "great hands" while singing, and works with her on enunciation and other aspects of stage presence, including how to battle her initial fierce bouts of stage fright
Stage fright
Stage fright or performance anxiety is the anxiety, fear, or persistent phobia which may be aroused in an individual by the requirement to perform in front of an audience, whether actually or potentially . In the context of public speaking, this fear is termed glossophobia, one of the most common...
that almost prevent her from taking the stage for her first music hall performance.
While performing in New York City, Édith meets Marcel Cerdan
Marcel Cerdan
Marcellin "Marcel" Cerdan was a French pied noir world boxing champion who was considered by many boxing experts and fans to be France's greatest boxer, and beyond to be one of the best to have learned his craft in Africa...
, a fellow French national who is a boxer
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
competing for the World Champion title. Though she quickly learns from him that he has a wife, who runs their pig farm while he's away, Édith tells Mômone that she is falling in love with Marcel. The affair that ensues, while supposedly secret, results in the playing of "La Vie En Rose" being played for Marcel wherever he goes. The morning after Édith has persuaded Marcel to fly to her from Paris to join her in New York, she wakes up to his kiss. She joyfully hurries to get him coffee and her gift to him of a watch, while she mocks and exasperatedly shouts at her oddly subdued entourage as they listlessly stand around her apartment. They finally break the news to her that Marcel's plane crashed. Édith hysterically searches for the ghost of Marcel that was lounging on her bed just a few moments before, crying out the name of her lost lover.
The narrative bookends these scenes from Édith's middle life with repeated vignettes of an aged-looking Édith with frizzy red hair, being nursed and tended to. She spends much of her time sitting in a chair by the lakeside, and when she stands, she has the stooped posture and slowness of a much older person. Another set of fractured memories shows Édith with short curly hair, plastered to her face like she is feverish, singing on stage and collapsing while she tries to sing, a moment when Édith herself realizes that her body is betraying her, when she is hosting a party at a Parisian bistro, and topples a bottle of champagne because of her developing arthritis
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
, and to the morphine addiction that ultimately plays a large role in her demise, as she injects the drug with a young lover in her bedroom.
After her husband persuades her to enter rehabilitation for her addiction, she travels to California with him Jacques Pills
Jacques Pills
Jacques Pills was a French singer and actor, born René Jacques Ducos. His impresario was Bruno Coquatrix. In 1959, Pills was the Monegasque entrant at the Eurovision Song Contest 1959 with the song "Mon ami Pierrot"...
and the audience sees the sober but manic-by-nature Édith being driven around in a convertible, laughing, joking, teasing her compatriots and generally being the life of the party, until she takes the wheel and promptly drives into a joshua tree
Joshua tree
Yucca brevifolia is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, Yucca palm, Tree yucca, and Palm tree yucca....
. The hilarity is uninterrupted as Édith gets out and pretends to hitchhike—the whole episode appearing to be a metaphor for her lifelong frantic efforts to be happy and distracted by entertaining others, through all manner of disasters.
Years later, Piaf, now frail and hunched, squabbles with her entourage about whether or not she will be able to perform at the Olympia
Paris Olympia
The Olympia is a music hall in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Located at No. 28, Boulevard des Capucines, its closest métro/RER stations are Madeleine, Opéra, Havre – Caumartin and Auber....
. No one but Édith thinks that she will be ready to attempt the feat, but she ultimately faces this reality herself. Then, a new songwriter and arranger shows up with a song, "Je ne regrette rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
"Non, je ne regrette rien" , meaning "No, I'm not sorry for anything", is a French song composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was written in 1956, and is best known through its 1960 recording by Édith Piaf....
", and Édith exclaims: "You're marvelous! Exactly what I've been waiting for. It's incredible. It's me! That's my life, it's me." She announces that she will indeed perform it at the Olympia.
Memories from prior to and during her last performance, when she collapses onstage, are interwoven through the film, foreshadowing the tragic end to a stellar but prematurely ended stage life. The memories appear to almost haunt Piaf. In one series, prior to what turns out to be her last performance, Édith is finally ready to go onstage after a series of delays, when she asks for the cross necklace that she always wears. As her staff rush away to get it, she sits and, in her quiet solitude, experiences more memories of her past, and after Édith puts on the retrieved cross and shuffles out onto the stage, the film presents more flashbacks as she is singing one of her signature songs, "Je ne regrette rien."
She relives a sunny day on a beach with her knitting
Knitting
Knitting is a method by which thread or yarn may be turned into cloth or other fine crafts. Knitted fabric consists of consecutive rows of loops, called stitches. As each row progresses, a new loop is pulled through an existing loop. The active stitches are held on a needle until another loop can...
, when an older Édith with an obvious stoop graciously answers the simple and polite questions of an interviewer: what is her favorite color? (blue), her favorite food? (pot roast), and then more poignant questions that she also answers without hesitation, again showing the longings of her life. If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be? "Love." To a young girl? "Love." To a child? "Love."
As though he is carrying a swaddled infant, Louis easily carries Édith, tiny and wasted away at the age of 47, into her bedroom and tucks her into bed, while the subtitle removes any illusions that this is other than the last day of her life. She is afraid. She says she cannot remember things, but has a disjointed series of memories of the kind of small moments that somehow define all our lives more than the "big moments" do—scrambled and fragmentary as a dying person might experience—her mother commenting on her "wild eyes," her father giving her a gift of a doll, and thoughts of her own dead child, Marcelle.
The film ends not with a death scene, which is implied, but with Édith performing "Je ne regrette rien" at the Olympia.
Cast
- Marion CotillardMarion CotillardMarion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
as Édith PiafÉdith PiafÉdith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads... - Gérard DepardieuGérard DepardieuGérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu is a French actor and filmmaker. He is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite and has twice won the César Award for Best Actor...
as Louis LepléeLouis LepléeLouis Leplée was a nightclub owner who discovered the French singer Édith Piaf singing on a Paris street corner in 1935. Leplée starred Piaf at the popular Parisian nightspot "Le Gerny" as "La Môme Piaf" .... - Sylvie TestudSylvie TestudSylvie Testud is a French actress, writer and director. Her film career began in 1991. She was later highly acclaimed, and has twice won César Awards.-Biography:...
as Mômone (Simone Berteaut) - Jean-Pierre MartinsJean-Pierre MartinsJean-Pierre Martins is a French actor and musician.-Biography:In 2009 played the lead role in Gregoire Sivan monster movie King Crab Attack! and in the both thriller films The Beast and La horde...
as Marcel CerdanMarcel CerdanMarcellin "Marcel" Cerdan was a French pied noir world boxing champion who was considered by many boxing experts and fans to be France's greatest boxer, and beyond to be one of the best to have learned his craft in Africa... - Emmanuelle SeignerEmmanuelle SeignerEmmanuelle Seigner is a French actress, former fashion model, and singer, best known as the wife of Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski, and for her roles in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , and Frantic...
as Titine - Pascal GreggoryPascal Greggory-Filmography:* Les Soeurs Brontë by André Téchiné* Catherine de Heilbronn by Éric Rohmer* Pauline à la plage by Éric Rohmer* Le trio en si bémol by Éric Rohmer...
as Louis Barrier - Catherine AllégretCatherine AllégretCatherine Allégret is a French actress. She is the daughter of Simone Signoret and Yves Allégret.In 2004, she published a book titled World Upside Down in which she contended that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather Yves Montand since the age of 5.In 2007, she portrayed Édith Piaf's...
as Louise Gassion - Jean-Paul RouveJean-Paul RouveJean-Paul Rouve , who was part of Les Robins des Bois, is a French film and television actor. He is also a film director and screenwriter.-Career:Rouve has appeared in over thirty films and over ten television productions....
as Louis Gassion - Clotilde Courau as Anetta Gassion
- Marie-Armelle Deguy as Marguerite MonnotMarguerite MonnotMarguerite Monnot was a French songwriter and composer best known for having written many of the songs performed by Édith Piaf and for the music in the stage musical Irma La Douce....
- Marc Barbé as Raymond AssoRaymond AssoRaymond Asso was a French lyricist.Born in Nice, France, his parents separation saw him leave for Morocco at the age of 15. After his arrival he tried numerous professions, including: shepherd, factory worker, chauffeur and nightclub manager. Between 1916 and 1919 he worked as a Spahi, a type of...
- Caroline Raynaud as Ginou
- Pavlína NěmcováPavlína NěmcováPavlína Němcová is a Czech-born model and actress.She is a celebrity in the Czech Republic and France. Her name and surname pronounce pah-vlee-nah nyehm-tsaw-va:.- Biography :...
as American journalist - Harry Hadden-PatonHarry Hadden-Paton-Stage:He was commended in the 2007 Ian Charleson Awards for his appearances in Romeo and Juliet at the Battersea Arts Centre and in The Importance of Being Earnest for the Peter Hall Company at Bath. He appeared in the 2010 premiere of Posh at the Royal Court...
as Doug Davis
Production
Four songs were entirely performed by "Parigote" singer Jil Aigrot: "Mon Homme" (My Man), "Les Mômes de la Cloche" (The kids of the bell), "Mon Légionnaire" (My legionary), "Les Hiboux" (Owls) as well as the third verse and chorus of "L'Accordéoniste" (The accordionist) and the first chorus of "Padam Padam". Only parts of these last two songs were sung because they were sung while Piaf/Cotillard was fatigued and collapsed on stage. Apart from that, "La MarseillaiseLa Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
" is performed by child singer Cassandre Berger (lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, who plays the young Édith in the film), and Mistinguett
Mistinguett
Mistinguett was a French actress and singer, whose birth name was Jeanne Bourgeois. She was at one time the best-paid female entertainer in the world...
's "Mon Homme" (My Man) and "Il m'a vue nue" (He saw me naked) (sung in part by Emmanuelle Seigner) also appear. Recordings of Piaf are also used.
The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
Box office performance
In theaters, the film grossed US$81,945,871 worldwide – $10,072,300 in the United States and Canada and $71,873,571 elsewhere in the world. In FrancophoneFrancophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
countries including Algeria, Monaco, Morocco and Tunisia, the film grossed a total of $42,014,775.
This film became the third-highest-grossing French-language film in the United States in the last two decades (behind Amélie
Amélie
Amélie is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Jeunet with Guillaume Laurant, the film is a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in Montmartre...
and Brotherhood of the Wolf
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Brotherhood of the Wolf is a 2001 French film directed by Christophe Gans, starring Samuel Le Bihan and Mark Dacascos, and written by Gans and Stéphane Cabel...
). http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=foreign.htm
Critical reception
The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. In particular, critics praised the lifelike and deeply emotional performance of lead actress Marion Cotillard, culminating in her Oscar win for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Critic A.O Scott of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, while unimpressed with the film itself, was still rather impressed with Cotillard's performance: "It is hard not to admire Ms. Cotillard for the discipline and ferocity she brings to the role." Carino Chocano of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
opined that "Marion Cotillard is astonishing as the troubled singer in a technically virtuosic and emotionally resonant performance..." Richard Nilsen from Arizona Republic was even more enthusiastic, writing "don't bother voting. Just give the Oscar to Marion Cotillard now. As the chanteuse Édith Piaf in La Vie en rose, her acting is the most astonishing I've seen in years."
Critic Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
was less keen; while he felt there was much to applaud, there was also "plenty to regret" (punning on Piaf's Je ne regrette rien). Kermode agreed that the source material provided "heady inspiration", and that Cotillard plays everything with "kamikaze-style intensity", but thought the film lacking in structure and narrative, creating "an oddly empty experience".
Awards
Marion CotillardMarion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
won seven Best Actress Awards for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose:
- The Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
- The Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Motion Picture (musical or comedy)
- The Prix Lumière (equivalent to the Golden Globe in France) for Best Actress
- The Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 2007 Seattle International Film FestivalSeattle International Film FestivalThe Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...
- The BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
- The César AwardCésar AwardThe César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma....
(equivalent to the Oscars in France) for Best Actress in a Leading Role - The Czech LionCzech LionThe Czech Lion awards are annual awards that recognize accomplishments in filmmaking and television. It is the highest award of achievement in film awarded in the Czech Republic...
(equivalent to the Oscars in the Czech Republic) Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Other awards include:
- The César for Best Production Design (Olivier Raoux)
- The César for Best Photography (Tetsuo Nagata)
- The César for Best Sound (Laurent Zeilig, Pascal Villard, Marc Doisne and Jean-Paul Hurier)
- The César for Best Costume Design (Marit Allen)
- Nominated for a further six Césars for Best Film, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best editing.
- The Academy Award for MakeupAcademy Award for MakeupThe Academy Award for Best Makeup is the Oscar given to the best achievement in makeup for film. Usually, only three films are nominated each year rather than five as in most categories...
. - The BAFTA Awards for Best Makeup, Costume DesignBAFTA Award for Best Costume DesignThe British Academy Film Award for Best Costume Design is one of the annual film awards given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:* 1969 - Oh! What a Lovely War - Anthony Mendleson** Funny Girl – Irene Sharaff...
and Film MusicBAFTA Award for Best Film MusicThe Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music is an annual award given by British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:*1968 - The Lion in Winter - John Barry...
. - Nominated for Best Film Not in the English Language at the BAFTAs.
- Nominated for Academy Award for Costume DesignAcademy Award for Costume DesignThe Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for achievement in film costume design....
. - Nominated for Satellite Award for Best EditingSatellite Award for Best EditingThe Satellite Award for Best Editing is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- Winners and nominees :The following listing is based on the web postings of the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :...
. - Nominated for 2008 Ivor Novello AwardIvor Novello AwardsThe Ivor Novello Awards, named after the Cardiff born entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They are presented annually in London by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and were first introduced in 1955.Nicknamed The Ivors, the awards take place...
for Best Original Film Score. - The Czech Lion for Best Film score.