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Plenty to regret

This biopic on Edith Piaf is beautiful but empty
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 20th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
A Norma Thalmage moment. Marion Cotillard as Piaf.
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La Mome (Edith Piaf)

Directed by Olivier Dahan
With Marion Cotillard, Gérard Depardieu, Marc Barbé, Caroline Sihol and Jean-Pierre Martins

In French with some English, and with Czech subtitles

Olivier Dahan’s biopic of the great Edith Piaf is a lush compilation album of her greatest hits, from the songs that made her name to her Garland-like moments of hitting the stage or tumbling into the orchestra pit whenever her diet of morphine and Manhattans kicked in. It’s a life in excerpts, an abstract rather than an attempt to plumb the depths of a complicated character.
Naturally, no film can contain an entire life. But, given La Mome’s three-hour running time, one can’t be blamed for wanting more, while craving less of what Dahan has chosen to serve.
Piaf’s life is a classic rags-to-riches tale, packed with events. Her mother was a wayward street singer, while her father was an itinerant contortionist. She finally wound up in the gentle care of the whores employed at her grandmother’s bordello.
Piaf went mysteriously blind, though a prostitutes’ pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Therese de Lisieux solved that problem. Soon thereafter she was reclaimed by her father and began performing with him on the street, complementing his attempts to foresee his own end with her rousing renditions of “La Marseillaise.”
From this promising debut, she herself becomes a street singer, occasionally sheltering in Pigalle’s apache dives to belt her songs. On a Parisian street she is discovered by the impresario Louis Leplée, who gives Piaf her name. She becomes La Mome Piaf: the kid sparrow.
Her career rises and falls with what seems like hourly precision. She becomes France’s favorite chanteuse, the toast of two continents, before sliding into loneliness, addiction, disease and despair, most of which will be captured for public consumption. Her signature songs, “La Vie en rose” and “Non, je ne regrette rien,” become ironic commentaries on the reality of her life.
This is the barest outline of Piaf’s story — and, unfortunately, the depths reached in Dahan’s film. So many episodes of Piaf’s life are absent, as they must be. Yet one wonders why Dahan felt it necessary to record every kick, slap, heartache and health crisis the singer experienced, while completely ignoring her life in Nazi-occupied Paris — a rich mine of incidents that would explicate much of Piaf’s character.
Instead, La Mome becomes a catalog of physical traumas, punctuated by the music (not surprisingly, the strongest element in this film). Dahan is nothing if not a stylish director, and La Mome is opulent, though in the way a Vanity Fair cover is. His meticulous detailing of the various eras Piaf lived through is stunning.
Recently, I find myself handing out this particular slice of praise often to films that otherwise lack substance. It’s the “beautiful room is empty” syndrome. T.S. Eliot famously said that every age deserves the art it gets. We seem to deserve little but décor at present.
There‘s been much praise heaped upon Dahan’s star, Marion Cotillard, and most of it is deserved. As the younger Piaf, Cotillard is electric, particularly where Piaf is rising to become a first-class artist, though with self-doubt that unleashes crippling stage fright.
Her imitations of Piaf’s decline, unfortunately, are less successful. Though submitting herself to hours of elaborate makeup schemes to reproduce the ravages of Piaf’s condition, Cotillard’s physical work strikes one as far too studied and mannered — ludicrously so at times.
The supporting cast does its best to gird this epic. Gérard Depardieu’s Leplée is a grand cameo, though Marc Barbé’s Raymond Asso (the poet who created Piaf’s style) is one of the film’s finest performances. Sadly, his character vanishes from the narrative far too soon.
Caroline Sihol is Marlene Dietrich’s doppelganger. It’s difficult at first to know whether Dahan is cleverly manipulating footage of Dietrich or whether we are looking at a living person. Sihol’s performance is remarkable. Jean-Pierre Martins also turns in a fine performance as Piaf’s great love, the tragic boxer Marcel Cerdan.
Ultimately there is no “there” there, though Dahan’s film will undoubtedly serve as a valuable prompt for people to discover the great ballad singer — and none too soon, if some of the comments on IMDB are to be believed. “Was,” one inquiring mind wondered, “Edith Pilaf [sic] the Britney Spears of her day?” Uh, no.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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