La Vie en Rose

The critics can get it wrong, as La Vie en Rose goes to show.

Following the recent three star review by the Sydney Morning Herald the prospect of seeing this Edith Piaf (portrayed by Marion Cotillard) biopic made me a little apprehensive. I mean three stars… that’s really slumming it at the Herald.

This is how they summed it up:

Its star shines, but the jigsaw-like structure of this Piaf biopic is simply confusing.

But let’s remember, anyone (in this case, French director Olivier Dahan) making a biopic faces a momentous task. Why? Because anyone worthy of a biopic is bound to have had a complex life.

Walk the Line, about Johnny Cash, and the more fanciful Bobby Darin effort, Beyond the Sea, are other biopics I have seen recently. And Johnny Cash, for one, didn’t exactly throw his guitar in the back of his ute after a gig, only to put his feet up back at the ranch, now did he?

So like it or lump it, any biopic is going to be a learning curve as far as a cinema audience is concerned. And the story of Edith Piaf was never going to be an exception.

Despite some of her music being familiar to me, I was really only introduced to Edith Piaf after watching My Summer of Love on DVD a year ago, when one of leads, Tamsin (Emily Blunt), spoke of her:

This is Edith Piaf. I just adore her. She was this marvellous Parisian woman who had such a wonderfully tragic life. She was married three times and each husband died in mysterious circumstances. The last one was a boxing champion and she killed him with a fork. She didn’t even go to prison because in France crimes of passion are forgiven.

Not quite the girl next door then?

What may confuse some viewers of “La Vie en Rose” is the movie’s non-linear storyline. The story starts at the end. Well almost.

Yet the flashback method of story telling especially suits biopics. “Walk the Line” picked up Johnny Cash’s story perhaps half way through his life. As for Bobby Darin, well, he’s still swinging…

My point is, does it really matter? Yet the SMH critic seemed to find this confusing.

However the time “jumps” are clear, and each time we are returned to the ever progressing “present” with little difficulty, as we witness Piaf succumb to alcoholism and then liver disease.

But forget the time line jumps and backward flips, It’s her captivating voice, and timeless songs, you want to hear.

The critics may have been bamboozled, but not the audience, who gave the film a round of applause (and we’re talking a cinema audience) at the conclusion. How often do you see that?

Three stars indeed…