Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-26
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: French, English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 135 minutes

DVD Description
From the slums of Paris to the limelight of New York, Edith Piaf's life was a battle to sing and survive, live and love. Raised in poverty, Edith's magical voice and her passionate romances and friendships with the greatest names of the period - Yves Montand, Jean Cocteau, Charles Aznavour, Marlene Dietrich, Marcel Cerdan and others - made her a star all around the world. But in her audacious attempt to tame her tragic destiny, the Little Sparrow - her nickname - flew so high she could not fail to burn her wings.

Synopsis
The life and career of Edith Piaf explodes on the big screen with LA VIE EN ROSE, a biopic which focuses on Piaf's relationships with some of the most eccentric personalities of her generation, including Marlene Dietrich, Yves Montand, and many more.

The Daily Mail
‘Simply sensational… worthy of an Oscar’

Customer Reviews

"Non, je ne regrette rien"
The story of France's most beloved singer begins in 1918 in a squalid section of Paris. Little Edith is abandoned by her parents and goes to live in her grandmother's brothel. There, she becomes blind from an eye disease and is cared for by the prostitutes. When she recovers her sight, she is forced to join her father as a street performer. Her remarkable singing voice is noticed by a night club manager and she begins her meteoric climb to success, but it is tempered by a series of personal tragedies.

The beautiful Marion Cotillard gives the performance of her life as Edith from her teen years to her death at age 47. She is physically transformed several times and is utterly convincing as a scrappy youth living on the streets, a sickly drug addict, and finally, a near-crippled and prematurely aged, dying woman. She rightly won the Best Actress Oscar for this challenging role.

The movie is in French with English subtitles, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment at all; in fact, hearing the beautiful French throughout made it better. Piaf's voice is heard on all the songs and it's a voice that reflects great pain and inner strength. This is an emotionally-draining film with outstanding acting. Highly recommended.

I hated this film.
Absolutely abhorrent. The narrative was poorly constructed with no real depth at any particular moment, no real exploration or any kind of binding motif or theme. It felt disjointed and trite - like a trailer for the life of Edith Piaf rather than any kind of real artistic representation or craft. Material haphazardly ordered, montage and ellipsis serially abused, the acting average. The screenplay was nothing special either, with some of the rare subtle nuances totally lost by the translation on the subtitles, which were dotted with Americanisms, no doubt to help the US audience get some of the jokes. Better to rely on your ears if you speak French.

I couldn't help but feel, having sat through it, that the snob factor of this as a French biopic is a veneer that has allowed its glaring flaws to go unnoticed. That it won so many awards and so much acclaim is, to my mind, utterly astonishing.

A confused kaleidoscope of Piaf's life
This is an absorbing biopic of the great French singer Edith Piaf. It is well acted and a gripping story, and the song are marvellous. I would probably have given it 5 stars except that the form of the story almost drove me mad.

It is all very well to have all these flashbacks, events out of sequence etc if you are already familiar with the details of Miss Piaf's life, but if like me you are not it is absolutely infuriating. I would have much prefered the film to be in a straightforward chronological sequence.

As it is, the parts about her childhood and youth are quite fascinating, but some details are so vague that I had difficulty understanding what was going on, and I would really have prefered the film to take a more coherent form.

Most annoying of all, the scene where she makes her first appearance on stage at the music hall, just when you think you are going to hear her belting out some marvellous song, instead all you hear is an insipid piano accompaniment, which almost made me want to throw something at the TV. Was this supposed to be meaningful in some way? It just irritated me beyond belief.

If this film had been presented more coherently, it would have been better, in my opinion.