When I was in middle school, I was watching the Academy Awards, and the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role came on. They show the clips from the films for each nominee, and the French actress Marion Cotillard was nominated for her movie, La Vie En Rose, a biopic about the late French singer Edith Piaf. When I saw the clip the first time, it blew me away. And Marion Cotillard won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role that evening.
Fast forward to 10 pm tonight, and I just finished watching La Vie En Rose. I can now see why Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her portrayal of Edith Piaf. I had seen Marion Cotillard in one film when I was younger. She played Josephine, Edward Bloom’s pregnant wife in the movie Big Fish, but in that movie, she is not the main character. She is a supporting character. When I watched La Vie En Rose, I got to see Marion Cotillard playing in a leading role. To be quite honest, I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf, and I had only listened to a couple of her songs in passing. I had only one song of hers on my iPod nano (I can’t remember which song, but I think it was “Hymne a L’Amour”) and I heard her famous song, “Non, je ne regrette nien” on the film soundtracks of movies like Babe, Pig in the City and Inception. And I have heard “La Vie En Rose,” but mostly covers of the song by Louis Armstrong and other artists. I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf’s life at all before watching the movie. All I know is that Marion Cotillard put her heart and soul into playing the role of this woman, whose life was short and also filled with many challenges, including childhood abuse, emotional neglect, substance abuse, grief, and loneliness.
The movie reminded me of a movie I saw a few years ago called Judy. It stars Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland, and like Edith, Judy died in her 40s. And like Marion Cotillard, Renee Zellweger is an incredible actress and was so incredible in her portrayal of Judy Garland. Renee Zellweger, like Marion Cotillard, won an award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in a biographical drama. Both of these women were commercially successful but faced a lot of pressure in the public eye and used substances like alcohol and drugs to cope with the stress of their careers. I remember sitting in the hotel room while on vacation, sipping from a little bottle of red wine I found in the minifridge, and watching Judy. By the end, I was a sobbing mess of tissues. I only knew Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but what these biopics show me is that you have to look past the role someone plays in a movie or TV show or on stage, and you get to see them wrestling with all this deep personal stuff when the cameras are off and they are dealing with their pain alone. Edith lived through a lot of tragedy, and it was even more tragic because there is a scene in the film where she is about to die, and it is scary to see her suffering as she faces her death alone. The film doesn’t hold back from showing the suffering that comes with illness and death. Seeing Edith’s gut-wrenching pain and sadness as she lives her final minutes on her deathbed was painful, especially because she had already dealt with so much grief in such a short time. The man she loves, Marcel, dies in a plane crash. She is thinking he is still alive, and she goes over to bring him breakfast, but then her staff inform her that Marcel died in a plane crash. Watching Edith run down the halls, screaming and grieving with tears running down her face, was an emotional rollercoaster. Actually, the entire movie was an emotional rollercoaster. I really loved watching the special feature afterwards where they discuss the movie. Marion Cotillard had a lot of prosthetics on her while playing the role of Edith Piaf, and she said that she tried to bring her own interpretation of Edith rather than just imitating her. I find the process of actors fascinating, especially when they are tasked with playing people who actually lived.
The movie is entirely in French, but I watched it with English subtitles. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have been mature enough to watch this movie the year it came out. I was only 13 at the time, and I don’t know if I would have gotten through the emotional rollercoaster of this movie. Also, there is a lot of mature material in the movie. Edith grew up in a brothel, and one of the women working in the brothel is sexually assaulted. Edith is separated from the women in the brothel, and it is a pretty painful scene to watch because Edith dealt with her mother abandoning her at a young age. I probably wouldn’t have been able to deal with watching the subject matter very well, especially seeing Edith grappling with illness and death. Even at 31, I still couldn’t fathom how painful this woman’s life was. Marion Cotillard showed through her movements and facial expressions the pain that this woman went through in her life. Even though the movie shows a few happy moments of Edith’s life, it doesn’t flinch from showing the grim realities of poverty, addiction and grief. I think after studying Buddhism, I think it helped me think about the movie from a Buddhist perspective. In Buddhism we deal with the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. Even though someone may be wealthy or famous, they are still a human being at the end of the day, and they are still going to experience these sufferings. Even though Edith lived a short life, she really gave her all to her career, so it was really sad to watch the scenes where they show her later in life when she is unable to continue performing due to her declining health. Watching this movie helped me appreciate the legacy that Edith Piaf left, and it also helped me appreciate Marion Cotillard’s work as an actress. (Also, side note, but I recognized one of the actors in the movie from a movie I saw with Queen Latifah in it called Last Holiday. I found out the actor’s name is Gerard Depardieu.)
La Vie En Rose. 2007. Directed by Olivier Dahan. Starring Marion Cotillard. In French with English subtitles. Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language and thematic elements.
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