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Review

Featured as opening night at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, there has never been a biographical movie quite like La Vie En Rose — but then again, there has never been a woman quite like Edith Piaf. Decisive, demanding and determined until the day she died, “The Sparrow” made fiercely personal songs about her harrowing life that have gone down in history as some of the most powerful of their kind. Her legacy is one to be championed, which is exactly what director Olivier Dahan does in this extremely bold picture. Rising up from a poverty-stricken life of slums and whore-houses, Piaf got her break when she was discovered on the street by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, here played by an incredibly endearing Gérard Depardieu. She quickly made her way to stardom, accruing a long list of celebrity friends and a notoriously extravagant lifestyle until her body gave way to cancer. It was the final of a painful battery of illnesses that included blinding conjunctivitis and deafening androgenetic alopecia (both of which she recovered from). Along the way she recorded several hits including “Padam…Padam” and “Non, je ne regrette rien” but also lost loved ones and suffered from severe drug and alcohol addiction. Marion Cotillard shines in her portrayal of Piaf in one of the greatest performances of the year. Dahan, wanting to break from the traditional bio-pic arc of depicting a subject’s successful period followed by their downfall, tells the story non-chronologically so that each down note is softened by bits of triumph. The result is a powerful climax that will soar into your heart. (French with English subtitles)

 -- Michael Lerman