La Môme (2007)
Directed by Olivier Dahan

Film Review

As icons go, they don't come much greater than Edith Piaf.  Over the course of a career that spanned thirty years, Piaf rose from being an unknown Parisian cabaret performer to become one of the most celebrated singers in history.  Piaf perfected an art form known as chanson réaliste, popular working class songs about life, love and death, about joy and sorrow, inspired by her own experiences, interpreted in a way that suggested the words were wrung from the depths of her soul.  Although she lived for most of her life in the public eye, Piaf's private life remains a dark and mysterious place.  Various attempts have been made by writers and filmmakers to piece together the life of the great singer, but the boundary between reality and imagination remains constantly blurred,  Even Piaf's own autobiography "Au bal de la chance" (a.k.a. "The Wheel of Fortune"), first published in 1958, is selective and misleading, clearly an attempt by its author to help fashion her own myth as a rags-to-riches tragic heroine to counter the very negative portrayal of her by some commentators. 

The truth is that no one has a complete picture of Edith Piaf.  She remains an enigma.  Perhaps our best guide to who she was comes from the recordings of her songs.  You have only to listen to the later recordings of her anthem Je ne regrette rien to get a sense of Piaf's true identity.  Just as her art was informed by her life, so her life is now revealed to us through her songs - the words and, more crucially, the way in which she expresses these words in her singing.  The reason why Olivier Dahan's bold cinematic portrayal of the life of Edith Piaf works so well is because it does pretty much this - it allows Piaf to tell her own story through her songs.

Anyone expecting La Môme to be a traditional biopic about Piaf's life risks being disappointed by this film.  Rather than a detailed chronological account of the singer's life, the film shows how the myth that was Piaf came about, through a unique confluence of talent and circumstance, through good fortune intertwined with tragic disaster.  Like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the picture of Piaf as a plaything of the gods is almost inescapable.  She lived and loved with an intensity that is more than human; Heaven showered her with great gifts that would lift her to the heights of happiness, only for her to be knocked down to Earth once these treasures had been ripped out of her grasp.  Dahan's film shows Piaf as an almost Faust-like figure who was driven to success not by any great ambition for wealth or fame, but to fulfil a deep-rooted need for love, the love which was lacking in her early years.

La Môme is impressive, alluring and memorable, but it isn't perfect.  Much of the dialogue lacks subtlety, the choppy narrative is at times confusing, and few, if any, of the secondary characters are drawn with any great depth or imagination.  Yet it is a film which it is so easy to fall in love with, and not just because of its stylish design and genuinely impressive production values.  What sells the film is the very effective way in which it matches up Piaf's songs with the poignant scenes taken from her life.  It's a film which plays on our emotions, in a way that respects both its subject and the intelligence of its audience.  More than anything, this is a film which explores the relationship between the artist and her life - how art emerges from the experiences of life and how it goes on to affect the lives of others.  It's not perfect, but it is a deeply moving film - probably the best tribute that cinema has so far offered to Edith Piaf.

What makes La Môme such a potent film is the tortured, engrossing performance of its lead actress.  Playing Edith Piaf both as a young woman and in her later years, Marion Cotillard holds our attention in every scene, dragging us up to Piaf's searing highs and down to her devastating lows.  She captures both the incredible power and charisma of the singer's public persona and the sadness and frailty of the private individual behind this carefully controlled mask.  The film's producer and financial backers were originally dead set against having Cotillard in the leading role; although she had acquired a solid reputation in France, she was virtually unknown elsewhere.  It was Dahan's insistence that secured the actress the role, a gamble that has certainly paid off.  Having triumphed in France (where it achieved a very respectable audience of five million), the film proved to be a great success across the world, particularly in the United States (where Piaf continues to have a very large following).  A shower of awards inevitably ensued, including four Césars and three BAFTAs.  The crowning glory was Marion Cotillard winning the Best Actress Academy Award in 2008 (only the third French actress to have received the coveted award, after Claudette Colbert and Simone Signoret); she had already bagged the César, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe awards in the same category.  For Marion Cotillard and her director Olivier Dahan, the future looks very bright indeed.  As the French would say, c'est la vie en rose...

Film Synopsis

In 1959, an internationally renowned singer falls ill during her highly publicised tour of America.  In the early 1920s, a young girl lives through the most harrowing of childhoods, rejected by her mother, reared in a brothel, and then earning a meagre crust by singing in the streets of Paris.  Though illness is gradually wearing her away, the ageing singer is determined to continue her career and plans her next concert in France.  The child grows into a young woman; her talent as a street singer attracts a nightclub owner, who offers her a job.  Her success is easily won, and easily lost.  When her benefactor is found dead, the young singer feels she has lost everything.  But no, this is merely the first act in her remarkable life.  The abandoned street urchin would become that great singer, would live a life filled with joy and tragedy, and would die, burned out, wrecked by over-work, self-abuse and illness, at the age of 47.  She was Edith Piaf, la Môme...