FILM OF THE WEEK
INTERVIEW | preview: La môme (La Vie en Rose) |
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| Written by Boyd van Hoeij | |
| Tuesday, 28 November 2006 | |
 Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's 'La môme' (La vie en rose). Photo (c): TFM distribution. The life of Édith Piaf is the subject of the upcoming Olivier Dahan film La môme (La Vie en Rose). Born Édith Giovanna Gassion, Piaf became famous as a chanteuse under the stage name La Môme Piaf ("The Little Sparrow"). Only 1.42 metres tall (less than 5 feet), her voice is often considered among the greatest of the world; famous songs include La vie en rose, La foule and Non, je ne regrette rien. The biopic was written and directed by the chameleonic Olivier Dahan, whose previous projects include Le petit poucet (Tom Thumb), an adaptation of a children's tale from Charles Perrault; La vie promise (The Promised Life), a drama in which a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) goes in search of her ex-husband and the sequel to the big budget policier Les rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) with Jean Reno.
La môme casts rising star Marion Cotillard in the role of Piaf, which could turn out to be the role of a lifetime. The actress, born in 1975 in Paris, comes from a family of actors and started acting opposite her mother whenever a child was needed in the plays or films her mother worked on. The young Cotillard became a recognisable face thanks to Luc Besson's Taxi franchise. Nominated for a César (the French Oscar equivalent) as Best Newcomer for the first Taxi in 1999, she was again nominated in the same category for Les jolies choses (Pretty Things) from director Gilles Paquet-Brenner and won a César as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's WWI drama Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement). She has also worked on several American projects, including Abel Ferrara's religious drama Mary, Tim Burton's Big Fish and the recent Ridley Scott film A Good Year. In La môme Cotillard will work with many well-known faces from French cinema, including Gérard Depardieu (Quand j'etais chanteur/The Singer), who stars as Louis Leplée, the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf and put her on stage and into the recording studio, but was brutally murdered shortly thereafter. Jean-Paul Rouve (Nos jours heureux/Those Happy Days) and Clotilde Courau (Nuit noire 17 octobre 1961) play her parents, who left the môme (also French for "child") with her grandmother (Catherine Allegret) who ran brothel in Normandy when she was only a year old due to the ongoing WWI. Piaf was married twice and had a child that died in infancy from another man, but the love of her life was the boxer Marcel Cedan (Singer-turned-actor Jean-Pierre Martins), who tragically died in a plane crash in 1949. Piaf was always surrounded by the rich and famous she counted as her friends: Charles Aznavour, Yves Montand, Jean Cocteau (who died one day after La môme), her impressario Louis Barrier (Pascal Greggory, the husband from Gabrielle) and another sultry singer and actress: Marlene Dietrich (Caroline Shihol). Behind the camera, talent includes cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata (whose breathtaking photography was the only good thing about Jan Kounen's Blueberry) and production designer Olivier Raoux, who earlier worked with Dahan on the lush and atmospheric Les rivières pourpres II - Les anges de l'apocalypse. By the looks of it, La môme will be a dazzling visual spectacle as well as an intriguing biopic with a great soundtrack. The film will be released in France on Valentine's Day 2007, and is likely to be part of the competition at the Berlin Film Festival, which runs from February 8-18. Related links: >review of La môme (La Vie en Rose) What's a preview? Starting this week, each week european-films.net will spotlight one upcoming film that the editors are looking forward to. This preview will contain not only a description of the film, but also information on casting, trailers and links to other pages on the web with more information. Want to suggest a film for the preview treatment? Let us know here.
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