Cotillard shines as Piaf in ‘La Vie En Rose’

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On DVD

LA VIE EN ROSE, directed by Olivier Dahan, written by Dahan and Isabelle Sobelman, 140 minutes, rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.

Marion Cotillard, the French actress who portrays Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan’s “La Vie En Rose,” takes a flawed movie and turns it into something memorable and haunting.

Dahan co-wrote the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman, and what they have created is a testament to a few things – first, the power of Cotillard’s fierce performance, which is nominated this month for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and second to Piaf herself, the hard-luck singer who survived her bum early years as a child in Paris to become Paris’ favored child.

For those who know and admire the mix of strength, frailty, pluck and heart that rings through Piaf’s voice – her “Milord,” “Hymne a L’amour,” “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” and the song that inspires the title of this film are classics – this movie based on her life wastes no time in underscoring the reasons behind the complex wealth of emotions that collide when Piaf sings.

In this way, “La Vie En Rose” can’t help but court the trappings of melodrama, which sometimes works for it and against it. Furthermore, while it isn’t always successful in tying up its loose ends – several subplots are oddly dropped, most curiously a critical one involving Gerard Depardieu as the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf – there is an admirable rawness to the production and to Cotillard’s performance that gets to the core of a woman who existed on the fringe.

Since much of Piaf’s early life is speculation, the movie explores the myth pop culture created for her. We see Edith as a child, when she was prodded by her abusive father to sing on the streets for money. Reluctantly, she did so, singing “La Marseillaise” until people cheered. Later, when her father abandoned her, she was shuttled to her grandmother’s brothel, where she received love and an enlightening education from a family of whores who came to adore her, most notably a prostitute named Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner) who treated Edith as her own daughter.

As good as these scenes are, it’s in the film’s exploration of Piaf’s rise from sketchy cabaret singer to polished, superstar performer that the movie is at its best and most seductive. It was, after all, during this time in which Piaf fell in love with the boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), who looked like a movie star and loved her like no other. Later, in the wake of a devastating event that won’t be revealed here, Piaf’s decline into drug and alcohol abuse staked claim to her ruin.

Whether because of her addictions or in spite of them, there always was the sense in that tremulous pull of Piaf’s voice that she was letting you into rooms that otherwise, in less giving hands, would have remained closed. To hear her voice wasn’t just to hear a woman struggling with the highs and lows of life (she died at 47), but also to hear Paris itself.

In her voice was sorrow, life, defeat and humor, but mostly, like the city that came to embrace her as its own, a sense of absolute acceptance for those who came to it. It’s this gift that Piaf possessed that the movie and Cotillard get exactly right, which turns out to be more important than the structural mistakes Dahan makes along the way.

Much like her American contemporaries Judy Garland, who also died at 47, and Billie Holiday, who died at 44, Piaf had that ability to draw everything out of you with a mere song. Her voice could do you in, lay you flat. In that way, there’s a certain risk in listening to her, but that risk, in the end, is what made her so great.

Grade: B+

Also on DVD and HD DVD

ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, directed by Shekhar Kapur, written by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst, 115 minutes, rated PG-13.

Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” is a movie fit for a drag queen.

The director’s follow-up to 1998’s excellent “Elizabeth” lives and breathes more for the lavish treatment given to its spectacular costume design, set design and makeup than it does for, say, such trivialities as history, which in this film is burned at the stake.

Not that that’s a surprise. Given its two-hour running time, history obviously needed to be compressed in an effort to highlight the critical details of a well-known story while also putting on a good show.

That proved true for the first “Elizabeth,” which succeeded in mounting a royally good time, but this time out, Kapur only occasionally comes through with a compelling account of what occurred in late 16th century England, when Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett in an Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress) was faced with losing her country, her crown and likely her head to the Spanish armada.

Worse for the film is that too often history is rewritten in an effort to hook the masses with genre convention, usually the sexually smoldering variety. There are times in this movie when you swear that Harlequin had a hand in it – particularly in a romantic subplot involving Clive Owen as the dashing Sir Walter Raleigh and Abbie Cornish as Bess Throckmorton, Elizabeth’s closest lady-in-waiting. But sitting through the credits disappointingly doesn’t reveal that to be the case.

This time out, at age 52 (yet oddly looking 20 years younger), Elizabeth is facing the deception of her cousin, Mary Stuart of Scotland (Samantha Morton, here mostly to offer up her neck), as well as the aforementioned armada, which Spain’s mincing King Philip II (Jordi Molla) has organized to restore Catholicism to England.

As you would imagine, those plot points, in the right hands, might have made for a rousing movie, and yet here, they’re dashed to the sidelines as Kapur focuses instead on the Virgin Queen’s lustful longings for Raleigh, which consume her. Is this historically correct? Depends on what history book you’re reading, though mine suggests Elizabeth had a wee bit more on her mind than fretting over whether Raleigh fathered Bess’ child and what it might mean to England should she enjoy a kiss from him.

With its emphasis on its endless array of costume changes, how properly to light and photograph those costumes, and then how best to showcase Blanchett in them, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” feels more like “Elizabeth: The Cat Walk.”

Grade: C

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

New to DVD

Renting a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases. Those in bold print are new to stores this week.

Balls of Fury – D+

Blades of Glory – B+

The Bourne Ultimatum – B+

The Brave One: DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray – C

Breach – B+

Bridge to Terabithia – B+

Daddy Day Camp: DVD,

Blu-ray – F

Damages, First Season: DVD, Blu-ray – A-

Death Proof – B+

Deja Vu – C+

Dragon Wars – D+

Eastern Promises – A-

Elizabeth: The Golden Age: DVD, HD DVD – C

Evan Almighty – C

Evening – C+

Fail Safe – A-

The Game Plan – B

Good Luck Chuck – D

Hairspray – A-

Halloween (2007) – D

Happy Feet – A-

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – C+

The Heartbreak Kid – C+

The Invasion – B-

The Invisible – C-

The Kingdom – D+

Live Free or Die Hard – B-

Me, Myself & Irene: Blu-ray – C+

A Might Heart – A-

Mr. Woodcock – C-

Ratatouille – A

The Reaping – D

Reign Over Me – C-

Resident Evil: Extinction – C-

Rocky Balboa – B+

Rush Hour 3 – D

Saw IV – D

The Simpsons Movie – B+

Shoot ‘Em Up – B

Shooter – C+

Sicko – A-

Stardust – B

Superbad – B+

Surf’s Up – B+

300 – C-

3:10 to Yuma – A

The Transformers – B+

28 Weeks Later – B

Underdog – C-

War – C-

We Are Marshall – D

You’ve Got Mail: Deluxe Edition – B+

Zodiac – C