La vie en rose (La mome)
A biopic just like Ray Charles but featuring Edith Piaf this time. For those who know the story her life was a tragic one – shunted back and forth between her parents and other minders when young, often living in brothels or a circus, discovered singing on the streets by an nightclub entrepreneur Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu) and then the rise to fame and the destruction at the hands of drugs and alcohol at the relatively early age of 47, looking like a wreck. It is a sad and somewhat sordid story. The huge plus in this film is the performance of Marion Cotillard who creates an excellent Piaf, 
rough, vulnerable, full of whims and with that inability to really cope with the fame she rose to – rather like Maradona, Monroe and others. The other big plus is the music. Despite these attractions, this film falls into much the same trap as many of its ilk – it is overlong, rather tedious in parts as it illustrates all sorts of details of her life – and her not so likeable character. The best parts involve her affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan but other than that there is too much irritating jumping back and forth in time and a rather morbid amount of time spent on her last few years. I was more than ready for the end when it came but there is no denying Cotillard’s performance.
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