Bravo! Beautiful Rose a Masterpiece

At the young age of 47, renowned French singer and star Edith Piaf (Marion Cotillard, A Good Year) made her unceremonious exit from this earth. Up until that day, the musician worked harder, partied more, sang with for greater passion and brought more emotion to her songs then just about any other superstar of her day. While her life may have been short, it was still spectacular, the entertainer’s humble beginnings belying an unstoppable talent still revered around the world to the very day.

Writer/director Oliver Dahan (La Vie Promise), recently proclaimed an Emerging Master at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival, takes a grandly operatic look at Piaf’s life with the melodious La Vie en Rose. More than a biobic, far more than a musical, this spectacular film is a triumph on so many levels I almost don’t even know where to begin.

Weaving back and forth throughout the singer’s tumultuous life, the movie covers Piaf from her time struggling with a wayward mother on the streets of Belleville, to her discovery by powerful nightclub owner Louis Lepleé (Gerard Depardieu, Jean de Florette), to her whirlwind romance with love of her life 1948 Middleweight Boxing Champion Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins, L’Empire des Loups), to her tragic death from cancer in 1963. Dahan covers it all, the film’s kaleidoscope pageantry assaulting the senses with blissful entertainment revelry.

There is not a single false note or a skipped beat here. Scenes flow one to the other beautifully, the director controlling the action as if her were the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. For me, I found it distinctly impossible to not help but become completely swept up within the film’s magnificently florid melodrama. Piaf’s story left me dumfounded, amazed and tearfully moved, the singer of such immortal classics as “Melord,” “Hymn to Love,” “Non, je ne regrette rien” and the timeless title tune living a far more ribald and interesting life than any I’d ever anticipated.

Cotillard is magnificent. Mark my words; she will get nominated for an Academy Award for the performance. What she does is beyond description, the actress’ portrait of Piaf so completely three-dimensional it’s mind-blowing. Like Helen Mirren in The Queen and Jamie Foxx in Ray, this isn’t impersonation but inspiration. Without question, this is the best performance I’ve seen this year, Cotillard so remarkable in my mind she is, without question, an instant and immediate superstar.

But the film is more than just one phenomenal performance. Dahan’s screenplay is a rich tapestry worth savoring, while his use of music, both Piaf’s as well as composer Christopher Gunning’s (Under Suspicion) original score, is absolutely sublime. The picture is also technically perfect; Tetsuo Nagata’s (Paris, je t'aime) cinematography, Olivier Raoux’s (Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse) production design and Richard Marizy’s (The Man of My Life) editing some of the best you’re ever likely to see.

La Vie en Rose is wonderful. I absolutely adored this majestic and movie motion picture, easily cementing itself within my consciousness for quite some time. It is, like its central character whose life it marvelously tells, a masterpiece. Bravo!

Film Rating:  êêê1/2  (out of 4)