The Case for Rose Glasses

And now for the review of the second festival film, La Vie en Rose.

The life of Edith Piaf was always going to have one amazing thing to recommend it - the music. Dark, melancholy, passionate. And so was the story of Edith "the Sparrow" Paif, from her destitute beginnings and her meteoric rise to the heights of the French and International music industries, carried aloft through the strength and passion of her voice. Her tragic love life, and the rapid deterioration from sultry singing siren to hunchbacked aged performer was incredibly portrayed by the lead actress, and she was utterly mesmerising in a film where all the secondary characters really just faded into the wallpaper.

Also seemingly unimportant was the necessity for a coherent story. The "arty" technique of flashforwards and flashbacks were put to dizzying effect, with some changes in the timeline almost unnoticable until some time into the scene. The decision to concentrate on Piaf's love life also made her seem a cruel, heartless bitch that avoided the second world war by fleeing to the USA (though one of my co-watchers informed me that this was not the case).

But through all the confusion and the length of the film (2.5 hours), the central performance and of course the music held the film together. Not the best biopic I have seen (it suffers in comparison with recent films like Ray, Walk the Line), still the sheer strength, passion and depression of Piaf's voice was enough to make this a standout. Given the choice, I would get the soundtrack over the dvd of the film, methinks. And La Vie en Rose was not even sung in its entirety during the film...

Verdict: More peach than rose coloured, but the voice was pure gold - black gold, to be sure...