La Vie en Rose

Edith Piaf’s all-too-short life, much like Judy Garland’s, is biographical manna: she was the flower who grew from a pot of dirt, the temperamental diva sustained and then crippled by drugs and applause. Olivier Dahan’s long, sumptuous-looking La Vie en Rose does much to skirt cliché—adopting a loosely chronological, quasi-impressionist narrative structure—but still finishes with “Non, je ne regrette rien,” which you can hear coming a mile away. This is, perhaps, as it should be; “Rien” was Piaf’s grand public sign-off (cf. Garland’s “I Could Go On Singing”), a flourish worthy of a woman who rarely made distinctions between her life and her art. Dahan (La Vie Promesse) does well to show us why, recounting much of Piaf’s early, hardscrabble existence in Paris and its suburbs, during which she survived on love, fantasy, superstition, song and little else. Likewise, Marion Cotillard’s fierce, concentrated portrayal of the mature Piaf is of a woman who uses pain as performative fodder, exploding when it comes to her offstage, unannounced. Such may be the hoary hallmarks of fame in the movies, but as Cotillard and Dahan so expertly demonstrate, they were Edith Piaf’s fascinating, exceptional reality. SEE IT NOW

La Vie en Rose is now playing at the Varsity (55 Bloor St. W.).