What Do The Critics Say?

"Olivier Dahan's sprawling portrait of the life of Edith Piaf is the kind of grand, passionate historical drama that no one seems to be able to pull off any more." Sean Axmaker SEATTLE POSTt-INTELLIGENCER "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." Frederic and Mary Ann SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE "Marion Cotillard delivers a tour de force as legendary singer Édith Piaf." Lou Lumenick NEW YORK POST "Olivier Dahan presents it as a glorious musical soap, and Marion Cotillard’s rag-doll charisma is the beauty of the film. The physical transformation is extraordinary, but it’s the spirit – perpetually plunging from exaltation to despair, that she captures most effectively. Without the pain, there would be no Piaf." James Christopher UK TIMES "It's the role of an actress' lifetime, and Marion Cotillard pretty much knocks it out of the park." Jack Mathews NEW YORK DAILY NEWS "Piaf's success only accelerated a trajectory that was set in motion years earlier, the course of which she was helpless to resist or to change. La Vie en Rose will be remembered and acclaimed for Marion Cotillard's incandescent performance." Duane Dudek MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

"La Vie en Rose honors Piaf's life by refusing to sentimentalize it. The film is long and sometimes harrowing, but also enthralling." Joe Morgenstern WALL STREET JOURNAL "The film resonates off the scale thanks to Marion Cotillard’s faultless portrayal of Piaf and of course, those timeless songs Piaf enriched the world with. La Vie en Rose will move you to tears. Un hommage mobile à un artiste merveilleux! Magnifique. 4 1/2 STARS." Richard Surfield THE MOVIE PAGES "Angry, needy, and almost painfully lovely, Marion Cotillard's Edith Piaf fills all emotional space in La Vie En Rose." Cynthia Fuchs POPMATTERS "Marion Cotillard is fantastic. It is the best sync singing, including body language, since Larry Parks in "The Jolson Story". This is an Oscar worthy performance. Not seeing "La Vie En Rose" would be a huge regret." Steve Crum VIDEO-REVIEWMASTER "... will be remembered and acclaimed for Marion Cotillard's incandescent performance." Duane Dudek MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL "Don't bother voting. Just give the Oscar to Marion Cotillard now. As the chanteuse Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose", her acting is the most astonishing I've seen in years." Richard Nilsen ARIZONA REPUBLIC

Finding Piaf "I wanted to make a film about what drives an artist. I was in a bookstore flicking through a book about Piaf when the idea suddenly came to me. I immediately sent a text-message to Alain Goldman. Five minutes later, he gave me the green-light. He was right with me from the get-go. In fact, he got back to me so fast, I wondered for a moment what I'd got myself into!," says director Olivier Dahan. "I was keen to work with Olivier again. We're very close, professionally and personally, but I didn't have anything lined up with him. Then, on January 22, 2004, at 3:46 pm, I received a text-message from him, which read, "A movie about music and love. A tragic, romantic blockbuster. French subject matter, international appeal. A major film about Piaf. That sums up the movie perfectly," producer Alain Goldman says. "For me, Piaf is the perfect example of someone who places no barrier between her life and her art. The fusion between your existence and work is the very foundation of a true artist. Like everybody else in France, I knew some of her songs and something about her life, but no more than that. She was the ideal "in" for me to talk about what concerns me. The spark came when I saw a photo of her, as a young woman, walking in the street with her friend Momone. Few people have ever seen what she looked like so young. The prevailing image of her is from the 50s and 60s; the frail icon in the black dress. That photo gave me a glimpse of somebody completely different, who wasn't yet Edith Piaf and who intrigued me. I pictured a kind of bridge between the prevailing image and that photo of an uncut diamond," Dahan recalls. "As the script took shape, I saw how Piaf's life was even more dramatic than one of her songs," Goldman explained. "A tragedy with a little bit of everything! Abandoned and raised in a brothel; blind, briefly, in childhood; on the road with her father, before winding up in the Pigalle district of Paris at the prey of a pimp. And just when her career takes off, she is accused of murder and has to start back at the bottom. The greatest novelist couldn't have dreamed up a better story." The common interpretation of Piaf's life is one of great tragedy. Is that what the filmmakers discovered. Not quite, according to Dahan who offered this assessment: "I don't believe in the tormented artist. Like everybody else, Piaf clearly had happy times, even when you would least expect. I don't agree that being unhappy is a prerequisite to being a great artist, or even an artist. On the contrary, you have to work at not being unhappy. In many biographies, the subject's childhood is skimmed over. Yet, those early years condition the rest of our lives. The key often lies in childhood." So how close is his interpretation of Piaf? "One day, Ginou Richer, who was Piaf's best friend for twenty years, got in touch. I sent her the script, thinking that this was the real test. She called me to say that I wasn't wrong about the character," says Dahan. When it came to casting the actress who would play 'The Sparrow', one immediately sprang to mind. "I didn't know her personally, but I immediately thought of Marion Cotillard to play Piaf. I saw her in several movies that showed she had the dramatic talent that was vital for the role and that few actresses possess. Piaf is an icon. Her face, voice and silhouette are instantly recognizable. For audiences to accept what I was trying to say, there had to be a likeness between the actress and Piaf. Marion is prettier but there is a definite resemblance when you look at early photos of Piaf," Dahan notes. "Olivier immediately sensed that Marion bore a marked resemblance to Piaf in the years when it was impossible to hide your true self. Marion did an amazing job. Not only did she get into the mind of the character, she also got into her skin. By some strange miracle, she began to speak just like Piaf, down to the tiniest inflection. She captured her movements, including the stiffness caused by the arthritis in her hands. Marion went way beyond imitation. She brought an incredible power and humanity to her work. When I saw her as Piaf for the first time, even before Didier Lavergne's magnificent make-up was complete, I just stopped in my tracks. I knew it would work," Goldman said. "Very early on, my agent told me that Olivier Dahan was writing a film about Piaf and had thought of me for the part, but experience has taught me not to pay too much attention to rumors like that until you have the script in front of you. In the next few months, from time to time I'd hear other rumors or push the whole thing out of my mind, and then one day, Olivier asked to meet me. We got on right away and felt very comfortable with each other, as if it was obvious that our paths would cross one day," says the star of "La Vie En Rose" and 2007 winner of the covetted Cabourg Romantic Film Festival Golden Swann award, Marion Cotillard. Cotillard revealed she had the help of a personal coach for the film. "I'd already worked with Pascal Luneau and he showed me something that was absolutely vital. I had so much admiration for Piaf that some aspects of her were incomprehensible to me, especially the tyrannical aspect. Pascal helped me realize that my admiration prevented me getting to the bottom of her," says Cotillard. After immersing herself in Piaf, the big day arrived. "We never worked on the physical aspects of the character; the way she walked, move, spoke; and then, the first day on set, I heard "Action!" and this voice I had never heard before came out of my mouth," she says. Cotillard's performance and transformation is to say the least, incredible, and that includes her faultless lipsynching of eleven Piaf hits. How did director/writer Dahan choose the songs? "I let my instinct and senses choose the songs. Some, of course, were automatic choices. I also wanted to hear Piaf sing in English, to lose the image of the French icon. As an artist, she belongs to no one in particular but to anybody who listens to her. Every artist's ideal is to attain universality," he said. And what perperation did Cotillard go through to produce such believable renditions? "I like to sing, but the technical process of miming to a tape was the hardest thing for me, simply because I wanted it to be perfect. I worked with a singing teacher to learn how Piaf sang; her body and tongue movements, and breathing. It was so complicated it nearly drove me insane." Was it worth it? "There were some truly amazing moments on this film, like when we were shooting at the Olympia concert hall in Paris, when Piaf makes a wonderful return to the stage with 'Non, je ne regrette rien'. Ginou Richer, who was very close to Piaf, was in the audience. It felt incredible being with her on set. It must have been strange for her. When I arrived on stage to sing that song, with Ginou there, it was absolutely magical," says Cotillard. Richer lived with Piaf for fifteen years recalls how they met. "I was only 16 when I met Edith," Richer says. "It was 1948, and she was already a big star. My boyfriend was part of a group called 'Les Compagnons de la Chanson' who toured with Edith and, against her wishes, he smuggled me along. When my presence was discovered, the great lady came along to throw me out of the hotel; but we instantly hit it off. I ended up becoming her companion. I did everything for her, her hair, clothes, makeup, but I never received a salary. We lived together as a couple. She always referred to 'our' house or 'our' car." And what did she think of Cotillard's portrayal of Piaf? " According to Richer, the actress doesn't just play Piaf but becomes her: "Marion has it exactly, the way she walks, talks, her way of laughing. The hardest part for her was lip-synching the songs, but really, you'd say it was Edith singing." 1990 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award winner Gérard Depardieu ("How Much Do You Love Me?"), plays Louis Leplée, the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf. "I didn't know Gérard Depardieu personally. Alain suggested him to me," says Dhan. "From our very first meeting, we got on well. Gérard is similar to Piaf. He doesn't distinguish between life and art. They intermingle." Depardieu and Goldman go back a long way. "I got to know Gérard on 1492. In my career as a producer, he was the first actor I signed up for a film. When we got back from the shoot in Costa Rica, he predicted that we'd work together for twenty years. Ever since, I ask him to participate on each of my projects, even if only for a few days. Making a film with Gérard is not just making a film, it's writing a small page of movie history," Goldman said. Pascal Greggory plays Piaf's manager, Louis Barrier. Was it true that Dahan rewrote his part? "He called me and I completely rewrote the part for him. On Ginou Richer’s advice, he was also the only character I altered. She told me one of the secrets to the character. Louis was madly in love with Piaf and they even dated in the early days. It's not mentioned in any of her biographies. It shows the character in a new light and Pascal was right to insist," says the director. And what of Emmanuelle Seigner who plays the prostitute Titine. "Piaf really was raised in a brothel, but I made up the character of Titine from a factual basis. I thought that prostitutes, with their maternal side, must have liked having a little girl live with them," Dahan revealed. Synopsis

From childhood to glory, from triumph to despair, from Belleville to New York, the extraordinary life of Edith Piaf. The true story of her incredible destiny opens a window onto the artist's soul and into a woman's heart. Intimate, intense, fragile and indestructible, ready to make any sacrifice for her art, this is the story of the most immortal singer of them all, Edith Paif. Abandoned by her mother, raised by prostitutes while her father was fighting in the war, suffering from infections to her eyes, Edith would eventually be reunited with her father and later in life would meet her mother while she worked the streets as a singer. She married at sixteen but tragically would lose her two year child Marcelle to meningitis. In 1935, nightclub owner Louis Leplée discovered her. He named the diminutive young woman 'the sparrow'. When war came to France, she worked with the French Underground. After the war she toured the U.S.A appearing twice at Carnegie Hall. She would meet and lose the love of her life. In 1963 Edith recorded her last song "L'homme de Berlin". She died of cancer on 11th October 1963 at the age of 47. Her great friend filmmaker Jean Cocteau died of a heart attack at the age of 74, only hours after hearing of the death of Piaf. Her memorable song "Non, je ne regrette rien" remains immortal to this day. Her signature song "La Vie En Rose" received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.

The Verdict "A biopic featuring one of the most memorable performers of the twentieth century, Edith Piaf. 2004 Cannes Film Festival Chopard Trophy winner Marion Cotillard gives the performance of her much acclaimed career in the lead role as 'The Sparrow'. A performance that includes lipsynching eleven of Piaf's songs with surgical precission. The transformation of Cotillard's appearance is remarkable and it will shock many viewers to see the deteriation Piaf suffered prior to her death at the age of fourty seven. It's hard to believe that this is the gorgeous woman who appeared alongside Russell Crowe as Fanny Chenal in "A Good Year". Didier Lavergne who worked this magical transformation deserves the highest praise. Piaf's life was a mixture of both love and tragedy and, as such "La Vie En Rose" pulls no punches. Don't expect a true to life chronological, onscreen account of her story because you don't get one. What you get is a warts and all true to life account as "La Vie En Rose" drops in and out of her life history as it sees fit, from the highs to the lows and back again. Thanks to this marvellous production, Paif lives once again through her immortal songs and hopefully this rich tribute will allow many more to experience the joy she brought to fans all over the world in the last century. Highly recommended. 4 1/2 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "LA VIE EN ROSE" stars .......
2005 César Award winner Marion Cotillard ["Big Fish", "Taxi I, II & III", "A Very Long Engagement" and "A Good Year"]; 2001 César Most Promising Actress Award, 2004 César Best Actress Award & 2004 Lumiere Best Actress Award winner Sylvie Testud ["Women or Children First", "Labyrinth" and "The Legacy"]; Pascal Greggory ["The Promised Life", "Gabrielle" and "The Page Turner"]; Emmanuelle Seignere ["Bitter Moon", "Laguna" and "Backstage"]; 2003 César Most Promising Actor Award winner Jean-Paul Rouve ["Monsieur Batignole", "Arthur and the Invisibles" and "Treasured Island"] and 1981, 1991 César Best Actor Award, 1991 Golden Globe Award and 2007 Lumiere Best Actor Award Gérard Depardieu ["Green Card", "The Man in the Iron Mask", "The Count of Monte Cristo", "102 Dalmatians", "Nathalie" and "Tais-toi!"] as Louis Leplée.
"LA VIE EN ROSE" was .......
directed by 1994 FIPRESCI Prize winner Olivier Dahan ["Already Dead", "The Promised Life" and "Crimson Rivers 2"]; screenplay by Olivier Dahan ["Already Dead", "Tom Thumb" and "The Promised Life"] and Isabelle Sobelman ["La Vie En Rose"]; costume design by Marit Allen ["Mrs Doubtfire", "K-19: The Widowmaker", "Brokeback Mountain" and "All the King's Men"]; production design by Olivier Raoux ["Would I Lie to You?", "Laughter and Punishment" and "Crimson Rivers 2"]; edited by Richard Marizy ["Ainsi soit nous", "The Promised Life" and "Crimson Rivers 2"]; cinematography by Tetsuo Nagata ["Officer's Ward ", "Leave Your Hands on My Hips" and "Paris, je t'aime"]; original music by 1988, 1990 & 1995 BAFTA TV Award winner Christopher Gunning ["Running Blind", "Under Suspicion" and "Firelight"]; produced by Alain Goldman ["Love & Confusions", "The Crimson Rivers " and "The Code"]. Who's Who?

Marion Cotillard Sylvie Testud Pascal Greggory Emmanuelle Seignere Jean-Paul Rouve Gérard Depardieu Manon Chevallier Pauline Burlet Caroline Silhol Clotilde Courau Jean-Pierre Martins Catherine Allégret Marc Barbé Elisabeth Commelin Marc Gannot Caroline Raynaud Marie-Armelle Deguy Valérie Moreau Jean-Paul Muel André Penvern Mario Hacquard Aubert Fenoy Félix Belleau Ashley Wanninger Nathalie Dorval Chantal Bronne

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Edith Piaf Mômone Louis Barrier Titine Louis Gassion Louis Leplée Edith 5 yo Edith 10 yo Marlene Dietrich Anetta Marcel Cerdan Louise Raymond Asso Danielle Bonel Marc Bonel Ginou Marguerite Monnot Jeanne Bruno Coquatrix Jacques Canetti Charles Dumont Michel Emer Robert Juel Leplée's assistant Mireille Josette

Run Time 140 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - Picturehouse - All Rights Reserved ©2007 All Rights Reserved - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.