Fridae

The lives of famous people are great fodder for films. Biopics �" which aim for a degree of biographic and factual accuracy, while striving to capture imaginatively the private life of the individual �" offer a grand opportunity for actors to display their talents. Those who are able to rise to the challenge are handsomely rewarded: think Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II, Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf.

Enter Marion Cotillard, the feisty Frenchwoman who put Russell Crowe in his place in A Good Year. (No, we didn't watch that movie either.) Taking on the legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf (after whose song the film is named) is a task of Herculean proportions. Though physically diminutive (Piaf stood at 1.47 metres), the singer was famed for her tempestuous temper and out-of-control lifestyle: think Lindsay Lohan, only with talent. By the age of 47, Piaf was dead of liver cancer �" the drugs and booze had taken their toll on her small frame.

But Cotillard is a formidable actress. Piaf is no problem for her. She evokes �" spookily and uncannily �" the spirit of Edith Piaf. From the bandy gaucheness that endeared Piaf to her French audience, to her bitter vitriolics as an old woman, Cotillard has Piaf's mannerisms and quirks down to a T. Cotillard even manages to capture Piaf's curious style of singing �" like a broken marionette puppeted by the hands of divine inspiration. But channeling Piaf is only half the battle won �" Cotillard's talent lies in sketching the woman behind the great voice; her idiosyncrasies, how she fell in love, how she destroyed herself. When Cotillard's Piaf realises that she will never sing again, her pain is chillingly palpable, and cuts to the quick. This performance will have the critics clamoring to give Cotillard statuettes of various sizes.

Unfortunately, the movie is as long as the list of actors who've been given statuettes for reprising such difficult roles. Director and scriptwriter Olivier Dahan's heavy hand chops Piaf's life-story up into bits. In one scene you could be looking at Piaf die, while in the next you're seeing her in her teens abused by her ne'er-do-good father, then suddenly she's a young girl again. None but the diehard Piaf fan will be able to make sense of this confused stream-of-consciousness narrative. Attempts are made at genuine biographical insight �" for example, Piaf's perfectionism could be attributed to her tumultuous childhood: an absentee father who forces her to sing for money, and a mendicant mother who believes herself to be a talented singer. But these are shadows of hints. Dahan makes no clear links, choosing instead to paint with tentative brushstrokes an abstract portrait of the "real" Edith Piaf. Which would be fine, were the film a short arthouse, but La Vie en Rose (French for Life in Pink) weighs in at a whopping 140 minutes. Snappier editing might have been in order. This is compounded by the half-hearted translation: most of the songs that Piaf sings remain unsubtitled, so non-Francophones will miss out on the juxtaposition of Piaf's body of work against the occurrences in her life, and with the exception of "La Vie en Rose" will probably miss out on the distinctly French flavour of Piaf's songs.

A pity, because Dahan has a good eye for detail, and his picaresque dreamscapes of the French countryside and town �" bordellos, circuses and their sideshow freaks, pilgrimages to Saint Térèse �" are deeply seductive, a tribute to the ragtag days of a France long gone. Dahan can find beauty in the unlikeliest of places. When little Edith is at her lowest, it is always the unsavoury dregs of society who pick her up and set her on her way: the prostitutes raise her in the absence of her father; drag queens take her in when she is implicated in the murder of her manager. (A cunning but unsubtle social message, perhaps?)

But the film suffers from a too-French romanticising of the Piaf mystique. Yes, Piaf's rags-to-riches-to-rags-again story is truly tragic, and Piaf is a tragic figure, but Dahan cannot resist the obvious. He plays up Edith's talent, and makes excuses for her really bad behaviour. But who could blame him? In the world of music, our imagination clings to the Edith Piafs and the Billie Holidays, who die early deaths, lives full of drama, drugs and dejection. Few remember a jolly Ella Fitzgerald, a double amputee in a wheelchair, still singing her heart out at the age of 70. And what would be the point of a biopic about her anyway?