Marion Cotillard is due a best actress nomination. She carries this movie, even if it isn't her voice that we hear singing.

The film includes many prayers to St. Therese de Lisieux, who is credited with healing her blindness as a child. It includes nothing of her activities with the French Resistance.

It bounces around in time a bit too much, but it is still well worth seeing.

This is on reasonably wide release over here, even though it's had quite a slating. Not seen it though. Is it worth it? There's a documentary about a cyclist that I'd like to see as well (Flying Scotsman).

Matt

We aren't especially fans of Piaf's music, but found the film quite enjoyable. If you are one who relishes watching outstanding performances, this one is a must see.

I thought it interesting that early in the film Piaf mentions that she and Billie Holliday were born the same year, I had already been making notes of the parallels - poverty, brothel, drugs.

This film isn't a tale of heroism that one might expect. Rather we see the struggle to deal with sudden fame and adoration by someone who has known only abandonment.

Also some very good visual work -- Child Edith with clown like makeup forming a sad smile that we keep seeing throughout her career, silhouette from behind as she is framed in spotlight from above.

A nomination?

Dude... she'd better WIN!!

I was deeply moved by this film, and I think it's one of the greatest screen performances by an actress I've ever seen. Cotillard immerses herself so deeply in this role, playing Piaf at different ages in varying states of disintegration and damage, that I felt like I was witnessing the real thing.

I thought I was joining this party very late, but I'm surprised to find I'm only the third person to post on this thread.

Get out and see this on the big screen if you still have a chance. I'm fairly confident it'll be in my Top Ten this year, and I may be making a hasty declaration here, but I don't care... Not even Cate Blanchett's return to the role of Elizabeth is going to threaten Cotillard's performance as the best performance by an actress this year. Oscar Oscar Oscar!

Take your Oscar ballyhoo elsewhere, Overstreet; everybody knows the British Academy has superior taste!

BAFTA, BAFTA, BAFTA!

You've talked me into it!

While I agree that Marion Cotillard deserves an Oscar nomination in the very least, I can't say that La Vie En Rose stuck with me as much as other films this year. I will shamefully admit that I did not know of Edith Piaf before I heard of this film (I know -- gasp! Though it turns out I did know her music), and I felt that when I left the theatre, I still didn't really know who she was. This didn't really have anything to do with Cotillard -- she dealt with powerful scenes with force and vulnerability, and her work with the different stages of Piaf's life was inspiring to watch -- but it had more to do with how episodic and jumpy the film was. I had a really hard time keeping up with where we were in time and how what had happened or was to happen to Piaf built on each other. While Cotillard's performance was powerful, I didn't find myself relating to her because I didn't know really where it was coming from or where the various scenes fit into her life. I'm assuming my own ignorance about Piaf did not help the matter, but the way they organized the film did not seem justified to me.
So it interested me that so many people loved the film so much (everything I had heard about it was very positive) --- did this not bother anybody else as much as it did me? Or did most come to the film with a good base of knowledge?

I didn't know anything about her either, except that her name comes up as an influence in the lives of some of the musicians I enjoy.

I thought the film did an incredible job of telling the long, complicated story of her childhood and career. The theme of the film seems to be "art growing from loss." And it illustrated that powerfully, just as Pollock illustrated art as the expression of complex emotional and psychological distress.

I felt that the attention to her childhood traumas went a long way in giving us some sense of the neediness that led to such powerful singing. And the bit of spiritual speculation... the appearance of St. Therese, specifically... was a brave choice and one that made some sense of her continued faith and her impulse to pray (in spite of her reckless behavior).

Well, yeah, but I don't want to get my hopes up for an actress in a foreign language art house film. On the plus side, it'll probably be in DVD by then.

My review.

I like the look of this film, but the scenes of big emotion -- people cackling, crying, misbehaving in a drunken stupor -- wore me down.

I knew Cotillard was being considered for an acting nom, and I thought she was doing well, although I had to separate her performance from the film, which I wasn't liking -- and that further deflates the film, because Cotillard's performance is the film. It seems to me that Piaf was a difficult woman as an adult, hard to sympathize with (I'm a grown-up, though, and can appreciate films based on unsympathetic characters), but that the film tries too hard to cover the standard bio-pic pitfalls through camerawork, editing, and by jumping around in time (although that last technique isn't all that unusual, I thought it confused things here, where a straight telling might have worked better).

So I had it in my head that the performance was good, even though I wasn't sure how closely the lead actress resembled Piaf in looks or voice, or whether those things should be deal-breakers in any case.

Then I watched one of the DVD supplements, in which the principals discuss how they approached the film. Seeing Cotillard, who's lovely and has a great smile, discuss her role really opened my eyes to the transformation she underwent as Edith. This is one case where a little extra knowledge helped me appreciate the film more.

I finally saw this film, thanks to my sister-in-law, and though I can't add much to what's been said here, but I'm bumping this thread up to remind others to see La Vie en Rose, if you haven't yet.