La Vie En Rose

Firstly, a word about order. I love many of these films equally, in different ways. For example, I love Spaceballs, and have watched it at least 15 times. I've only viewed this next pick, La Vie En Rose, twice, probably because its content is at times so difficult to stomach. But just because La Vie En Rose is more serious, and, perhaps more noble in it's intentions does not make it a "better" film. The two pictures have totally different purposes; and at said purposes, they both succeed wonderfully. So ultimately, many of these films on my list aren't per se "better" than others, but I've no choice but to separate them, unless I want the biggest tie in the history of Best Lists. So try not to get too bogged down in the minutae of which film is which number. Find one that suits your mood and pop it in. Oh, and btdubs, adding a new feature called "Singular Scene", that will summarize a specific moment from the film that stands out to me the most. Also, thanks to all who commented, verbally, electronically, or psychically, on the first post. Please continue, so that my mad Jew love for you will grow.

FILM #99
LA VIE EN ROSE


The 25: The tale of France's most revered performer gets an excitingly unconventional screen adaptation that features the most stunning breakout turn in decades.

La Vie En Rose, about legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf, is not a biopic. It couldn't care less about facts, dates, even the verifiable historical accuracy of the events that occurred. Instead, it aims to take us inside the fevered mind of a dying woman looking back on her life, recalling it in a messy, breathless barrage of highs and lows. Miraculously, it succeeds. This isn't the first movie to employ the "life flashing before our leading characters eyes" conceit, but it's the first to get it almost entirely right. I've obviously never died (unless I am in fact reincarnated, in which case I sincerely apologize to my previous manifestations), but I don't think it's a stretch to say that, when we look back on our time here, replay it all in our mind, it won't take on the form of a Big Movie. The memories will probably fly to us at random, interrupt each other, even indirectly comment on each other, take on such a vivid, strange reality that we will feel both like we're re-living and analyzing them under a looking-glass until, God willing, we reach some kind of conclusion about the point of it all. Director Olivier Dahan apparently agrees with me, and captures this disorienting process by scrapping any kind of linear plot and throwing us headfirst into a seemingly random assembly of pivotal moments in this woman's life. Edith is abandoned with a cadre of prostitutes. She has a brush with blindness. She sings on a street. She witnesses a circus. She learns to pray. She gets drunk. She falls in love. She is a drug-addled elder. She is a young woman at a tense voice lesson where she learns to sing "words, not sounds." She is collapsed at a dressing room table in a sweaty heap, shaking with stage fright. She is onstage for the first time, where music pours out of her like a bittersweet honey. But through it all, she is Edith Piaf, the woman of hunched stature, sad, olive-green eyes, and a singing voice that rings out like a mournful, beautiful church bell of longing and loss. This is all thanks to the actress who plays her, Marion Cotillard, who totally captures the public image of the woman while leaving room for her own personal interpretation of the songstress. She nails the little details, yes-Edith's strange hand tics, her deep, open-mouthed breaths between notes, her weird waddle of a walk. But she also conveys the constant shifting feelings of a woman in a passionate love-hate affair with a life that seems to give and take from her in equal measure. All this, and she never really seems to be trying. And to think people were actually surprised when she won the Oscar! All the other performance and technical aspects of the film are top-notch, but it's Cotillard's work that propels it, guiding it smoothly past a few rough, unfortunate brushes with silly melodrama. This is not an easy movie to watch. It lays out, with more squeamish detail than we're used to, the amoral life of the artist. But it's an exhilarating opportunity to watch two geniuses at work; Dahan, the co-writer and director who dreamed up this so-mad-it's-brilliant approach to the material, and Cotillard, who brought it all to life. Together, they create an astonishing portrait of a woman desperately sorting through the jumbled puzzle pieces of her existence, until, towards the end of it, she finally takes a stab at life's meaning in a quietly touching, very telling exchange with a young reporter:
"Reporter: What is your advice to a woman?
Edith: Love.
Reporter: To a young girl?
Edith: Love.
Reporter: To a child?
Edith:.....Love."

The SINGULAR SCENE: Crushed by the death of her lover, Edith barrels down a hallway, sobbing uncontrollably, until, in a devastating moment of magical realism, the hall turns into a stage, and our heroine lets her grief out in song.