LA VIE EN ROSE

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 7 MARCH 2008)

I have no doubt the Oscar is very happy in the arms of this year’s Academy Award Best Actress. I consider leading contender Cate Blanchett an exceptional actor, in any role, but I would have wept if she won this year’s Oscar for Elizabeth: The Golden Age instead of Marion Cotillard, whose performance in La Vie en Rose is, as described by Stephen Schaefer for the Boston Herald, “nothing less than monumental.” The eminent history of the Academy Awards would itself demand that the French actress be given her pride of place for her portrayal of the iconic La Môme Piaf (The Little Sparrow) in the biopic by Olivier Dahan.

And the memories I had
I no longer desire
Both the good and the bad
I have flung in the fire
—Édith Piaf, from her signature song “Non, je ne regrette rien”

On stage to accept her acting Oscar at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles two Sundays ago, Cotillard said with a lovely French drawl, “It is true…there are some angels in this city.” Édith Piaf, born Édith Giovanna Gassion in the slums of Paris in 1915, would have attributed it to St. Thérèse de Lisieux, her patron saint throughout life, but, of course, it was Édith herself, in spirit, in memory, in legacy. It would have been a mockery if a lesser artist played the Little Sparrow in this gripping, breathtaking reenactment of a life lived in pursuit of greatness.

La Môme in France, the movie has been renamed La Vie en Rose for cinema audiences in English-speaking countries like Britain and the United States, after the song Édith herself wrote shortly after the Second World War. In the movie, it was this wildly popular song that underscored the great affair between her and the one she called “the love of my life,” Algeria-born French boxing champion Marcellin Cerdan, whose family in a quaint farm in Morocco posed the greatest barrier between the chanteuse and her happiness. In a scene in La Vie en Rose, she confided to her friend Ginou, feigning indifference, “I’ll never have him. He’ll never be mine. He won’t leave his wife and kids,” only to place a desperate overseas call no more than two minutes later to entreat Marcel to come to Paris because “I can’t be apart from you anymore.”

I wonder if Édith’s life had been as dark and depressing over-all as La Vie en Rose, which ironically translates to “A Life in Pink.” Sunshine made itself very scant in this film, where practically every scene is veiled in poetic shadows, except during brief diversions, such as when Édith and her team were on a road trip in California. But even that scene is very sad, in which the viewer is made to imagine her alternating between pain and numbness on account of depression and her growing morphine addiction. As you know, history can only accommodate highlights and, if we were to define the life that is to be remembered forever based on history’s depiction of how Édith Piaf lived hers, we would define it as a series of tragic moments, interrupted only by career landmarks and milestones and—only too briefly—a high point at which love, along with happiness, promises to last.

And then, flashback to 1949, a plane bound for Paris crashes in the Azores in Portugal. Among the casualties is Marcel Cerdan on his way to France to meet Édith.

For me, that was a high spot in La Vie en Rose for both the viewer and the lead actor, Marion Cotillard, who was given the opportunity of a lifetime to showcase her immense talent. Despite the score rising to a crescendo, it is as though suddenly all sound had left the world, as you concentrate on Cotillard acting out the intense moment, her eyes, her facial muscles, the shaking of her hands, the closing and opening of her soundless mouth articulating the deepest sorrow, the most unbearable anguish.

But life cannot be all bad, just as it cannot be all good, even for those destined for greatness and destined to pay a great price for it. On a more triumphant note, when light briefly promised to cast away the shadows, there is another high spot for me. That was when, in one of her first few music hall tours of New York City, Édith met Marlene Dietrich, who told her, “I haven’t been to Paris for ages, but this evening when you were singing, Édith, I was there… in the streets, beneath its sky. Your voice is the soul of Paris. You took me on a journey. You made me cry.”

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.