Tuesday, February 19, 2008

An Amateur's Thoughts on La Vie en Rose

La Vie en Rose was, to me, like a car accident - chaotic and at times grotesque, but you just can't look away. Here are a few of my thoughts on the movie:

~Marion Cotillard definitely deserves her Oscar nod, as I found her believable playing all different ages as Edith Piaf. As Piaf was quite eccentric, this must have been a difficult role to play. She became Edith Piaf.

~The music in the film is fabulous. Even those who are not familiar with French music will recognize bits and pieces along the way.

~The movie focuses on the theme of loss throughout Piaf's life. I'm not sure why, but even though I came away overwhelming sad, I never cried or even teared up during the film. Her life was terribly sad, and yet she was not a sad person so you don't necessarily feel sorry for her.

~I think the movie made Edith Piaf seem much weirder than she really was. I came away from the movie almost weary because she seemed to be crazy and erratic for most of her life, but when I looked up some information on her it seemed that, while she did live on the wild side, she wasn't as insane, alcoholic, and drug-addicted as she seemed in the movie.

~The movie jumped around in time a lot. While that can be confusing, I generally enjoy it in a movie because it makes me think more. This was out of control, though. There were so many scenes that were never revisited and I kept waiting for the story to pick them up or tie them in. I get that they were there just to give an idea of the kind of life she was living, but I came away with a frustrated and vague idea of the chronology of her life.

~Finally, I don't mind foreign language films at all, but an entire movie in French is just annoying.

~Oh, and there is a TON of screaming in the movie (you know those crazy, passionate French people). It overwhelmed me a bit.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Guest blogger AK's other writings can be found at Pulitzer Palavar.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with AK's review.

I would've liked for them to translate the French songs. They sounded beautiful, but I had no idea what they were about.

Jeremy said...

At first I did think translations of the songs would've been helpful, but I kinda felt it didn't matter since you could tell by the expressions in Piaf's voice what she was singing about. I liked this movie a lot.

RC said...

ak, thanks for posting!

Anonymous said...

I've been interested in seeing this movie, especially since Marion Cotillard has been nominated for an Oscar and has won some other awards for her performance. But I too am not a huge French film fan... Thanks for the review AK! :-)

general125 said...

I can't believe your profile pic has half of your spouse's face cropped out. Tsk, Tsk :)

AK said...

At least half of my spouse's face made it in the picture... ;)

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