* WHERE: Broadway Centre Cinemas.
* WHEN: Opens today.
* RATING: PG-13 for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language and thematic elements.
* RUNNING TIME: 140 minutes; in French with subtitles.
* BOTTOM LINE: The life of French superstar Edith Piaf receives a rich treatment in this biography.
The French singer Edith Piaf declared in her signature song that "I regret nothing" - though there was plenty in her tumultuous life, captured dramatically in Olivier Dahan's sweeping biographical drama "La Vie en Rose," that could cause a few regrets.
Born in squalor in 1915, Edith Giovanna Gassion spent parts of her childhood raised in her grandmother's brothel and with her circus-performer father, and was at different times nearly blind and deaf. By the time we meet Edith as an adult, passionately played by Marion Cotillard ("A Good Year"), it's as if she has lived two lifetimes.
Dahan, who wrote and directed, shows Edith in the swirl of Paris of the '30s, singing on the streets with her pal M mone (Sylvie Testud). That's where she is discovered by clubowner Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu), who gives her the stage name "La M me Piaf," "the little sparrow."
But, in what seems to be a pattern in Piaf's life, joy is closely followed by tragedy. After her first album is produced, Leplee is murdered by gangsters - and Piaf, who was dating one of the thugs, is named as an accessory.
Dahan jumps around the timeline, early in the film showing us Piaf near her death in 1963: Stricken with cancer and arthritis, relying on morphine just to get onstage. But, like Judy Garland (whose life had a similarly sad trajectory), Piaf seemed to live for those moments on the stage, where she could transform her personal tragedy into emotion-filled song.
Dahan must pack so much of Piaf's life into this movie that occasionally he makes shorthand references only a Piaf fan, or a Frenchman, could catch. (Imagine watching an Elvis biography and not recognizing the opening chords of "Hound Dog," and you get the idea.) Friends, associates and lovers - notably the boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins) - sometimes fly by in a blur.
But the constant that makes "La Vie en Rose" so compelling is Cotillard's dynamic portrayal of Piaf. It's not just that Cotillard gets down the mannerisms, like the stooped walk or her fiery stage presence, or that she spans Piaf's life from a feisty teenage bar singer to an invalid in her 40s. It's that throughout, Cotillard maintains Piaf's spark of life, that sense that she has and will take anything life dishes out - and defiantly sing about it.
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* SEAN P. MEANS can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
