2007



February 3, 2008
Netflix DVD
France / UK / Czech Republic
French / English
140 Minutes
Biography / Drama / Music
Olivier Dahan

The Extraordinary Life Of Edith Piaf.



Brilliant performance by Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf, who is generally considered to be France's best pop singer of all time.

A Dickensian upbringing will make you head to the Wiki to see if all of it can possibly be true. Born in 1915 to circus performing father and singing-on-the-street mother. Left alone by mother while father is in the trenches of WWI. Father returns, and takes Edith to his mother, who happens to be the madam of a low-end brothel. Edith becomes the young mascot of the whorehouse. And one day, she goes blind. She can't see for several years. The hookers take her to a holy shrine and several months later, she takes off her blindfold and lo and behold, she can see again. Father grabs her from whorehouse, takes her on the road as a circus laborer. They quit the circus and dad begins performing in the streets and forces his daughter to sing as part of the act. Later Edith falls in with a pimp who makes her pay him the money she makes singing on the street, or be forced into prostitution like his other girls. She drinks, she fights, she swears, she sings like an angel.

Nightclub owners hear her and weep--critics swoon--and Edith drinks and runs around like a crazy girl. There is sort of an Amadeus vibe to this film. She's a complete mess, except when she's on a stage in front of a microphone. Where she's magical.

The songs are Edith's and they must have been remastered because it sounded like she was right there singing to me. Cotillard had the manerisms down, the tilted head and wide eyes--the reaching arms.

She ages in this film from 20 to nearly 50 with inconsistent success. Her hard life caught up to her in her later years. The filmmaker chooses to bounce the narrative all over the place. She's four, she's 45, she's in New York, she's in France, etc. He does do something unforgettable. The scene that everyone knows from the poster or the trailer is when we are behind Edith and the spotlight is shining on her and the microphone is in front of her. We've seen scenes of singers taking over a concert hall before, but the director here films the scene with background music, while we watch Edith wow the crowd by singing--they are laughing, crying, clapping--but all we hear is the unrelated background music, until the song is over and we're brought back to the concert hall and the thunderous applause.

Oscar Nominations:
--Actress Marion Cotillard
--Costumes
--Makeup

6.6 Metacritic
7.6 IMDB

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