La Vie en Rose
This film is a terribly sad yet moving portrait of Edith Piaf, a French treasure in song. The movie starts with old Piaf then traces her life with varying degrees of success. The acting is brilliant, yet I wonder about the editing. As with other biographies I see the old and young intermingled, but Ms. Piaf’s fall is so short in her 40’s, looking like an eighty year old, that I would rather have seen a chronological narrative. I’m not sure if this would have been more powerful but this is my gut. The movie drags with the back and forth, gets strange in some places with these switchbacks but I get the point and I appreciate the work. I come away with a new inspiration and this is all that’s important in the end, a new idol presented to me, born the year of my grandparents, who moves me to look back on my twentieth century and what a solitary voice can do for the people who live in it. I remain steadfast on ‘Copying Beethoven’, which is one of the best films about creators I’ve seen and rings in my ears. I don’t feel the resonance with this one, but looking hard at a creative life meant to soar and undone early is a slow untethering that troubles the mind, the years slipping by as talent is tossed needlessly away. There are no second and third acts in this film which although very Hollywood resuscitate a tired audience… there is simply the spiral into early old age, and as there seems to be no thought to the contrary I’m inclined to believe that the director and writer were true to life as much as possible.
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