Friday, January 18, 2008
TRE TRAGIQUE
Today's film was the Edith Piaf biopic
La Mome / La Vie en Rose (2007)
I didn't much care for Edith Piaf's singing when she was alive and I didn't much care about her after she was gone.
This interesting film is very well done with a bravura (Oscar level) performance by Marion Cotillard and wonderful production values. But I didn't care much for it either.
Cotillard is amazing in the electric eccentric way that I suppose Piaf was. I never actually saw her. Maybe on television.
She was an ogre. She had an incredibly tragic life. She was an addict and alcoholic without any recovery. She was so self destructive that it is a wonder anyone stayed around her.
She left people behind. She was a liar. Ultimately so temperamental that she could not really perform.
But perform she did.
When I came out she was a favorite of gay men in the tragic femme way that Judy Garland was a favorite.
The talent was there but the story trumped the talent all to hell.
The film suffers from a fractured time warp presentation and, in the subtitled version, the absence of words for the song lyrics which are obviously meant to convey aspects of her life. So there is a lot missing in one basic respect.
Of course, if you speak french and know the words this is not a problem but it is a curious omission from the American disc.
So here we are with a very unpleasant story to tell and a film that lasts 2 hours and 20 minutes with an unimpeachable performance and some breathtaking scenes.
How do you deal with that?
Give it a 3 or 4 out of Netflix5 and run like hell to get away from it.
