Just saw La Vie en Rose a couple of nights ago, and it's a phenomenol movie. It's the only film I've ever been to where at the end, when the screen goes blank, the crowd just sat there in stunned silence.... for a full 45 seconds, before someone started a tenantive applause going, which stuttered across the rest of the audience. None of the usual fidgeting, rushing out of seats the minute the last scene is obvious. Rather eerire to have an entire theatre of people just staring at a blank wall. These French really know how to do death - the ending was really powerful. Sort of like having someone reach in for your guts and twist them around really good before yanking them out.
For the tasteless (and you know who you are), it's a biopic on Edith Piaf, the French crooner. She was given the name Piaf (Sparrow in French) by Louis Leplee, the man that discovered her singing for her supper on the corner of a Parisian Street. It was an incredible life, an incredible woman. When she belts it out, the hairs on your arms stand to attention, and she was a complete diva - talented, temperamental, hard living, gutsy and arrogant. As she says, when her manager fusses over her because she's kept a composer waiting for over two hours "What's the point in being Edith Piaf!" . Marion Cotillard is just superb as Piaf - I have no idea how close the resemblance is, but this is how I'll always think of her. Part fluttering sparrow and part wild animal, both hurling themselves against the bars of a cage. And while she owns the movie, I just have to say that Jean Pierre Martins is entirely edible.
The beginning is a little slow and could possible have done with some tighter editing, but by the time you get to the second half, Edith rules you. An inspiring woman. An inspiring life.