← Back to Reviews
in
This film raised an interesting question for me. How should you rate a biopic? Should it be based solely on the portrayal that is presented on screen, how accurately it captures the life and essence of the person it's chronicling, or some mixture of the two? I suppose the more you know about the person yourself, the more you accurate you will want the depiction to be.
Anyway, whatever the answer, undoubtedly the two best things about this biography were: 1. Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf - she was absolutely fantastic and thoroughly deserved the Oscar she won. 2. The music - and seeing as it's a biopic about one of the most celebrated musicians of the last century, it would be a bad sign if the music wasn't a highlight.
However, seeing as I do know a bit about Edith Piaf, I did feel that it failed to do her justice in some respects. It really seemed to go out of its way to portray her as a sort of femme fatale, brilliantly talented but wildly erratic as well as being alcohol and drug dependent. While all of this is true, it never focused on, for example, her active role both in France and worldwide in keeping the cabaret, music hall culture alive as it suffered following the war and with the onset of rock. Moreover, from this film's depiction of her, I wouldn't even get the impression that she was capable of doing that.
Still, it wasn't bad by any means, just not what it might have been.
)
La Vie En Rose (2007)
This film raised an interesting question for me. How should you rate a biopic? Should it be based solely on the portrayal that is presented on screen, how accurately it captures the life and essence of the person it's chronicling, or some mixture of the two? I suppose the more you know about the person yourself, the more you accurate you will want the depiction to be.
Anyway, whatever the answer, undoubtedly the two best things about this biography were: 1. Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf - she was absolutely fantastic and thoroughly deserved the Oscar she won. 2. The music - and seeing as it's a biopic about one of the most celebrated musicians of the last century, it would be a bad sign if the music wasn't a highlight.
However, seeing as I do know a bit about Edith Piaf, I did feel that it failed to do her justice in some respects. It really seemed to go out of its way to portray her as a sort of femme fatale, brilliantly talented but wildly erratic as well as being alcohol and drug dependent. While all of this is true, it never focused on, for example, her active role both in France and worldwide in keeping the cabaret, music hall culture alive as it suffered following the war and with the onset of rock. Moreover, from this film's depiction of her, I wouldn't even get the impression that she was capable of doing that.
Still, it wasn't bad by any means, just not what it might have been.
)