That necessarily has something to do with the fact that I have seen La Vie En Rose - or rather La Môme since that is what it was called when I caught it while still living in France - and not Away From Her. But like most Englishmen of a certain age, I am very fond of Ms Christie and thought an Oscar at this late stage of her career would have been rather fitting.
What is more, my elder daughter Christelle is a film publicist, worked closely with her on promoting the movie and very much wanted her to win, too.
But félicitations are due to Mme Cotillard. The Academy also gets my endorsement of its choice of the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men as Best Film and Best goodness knows what else. That movie I saw here in Abu Dhabi, and what a powerful cinema-going experience it was. And Christelle's professional interests were served by the Best Foreign Film award for another superb film, The Counterfeiters
Back to Cotillard - whose Oscar adds to her triumphs in the Bafta and French César awards - and, without the least apology, a quick reminder of how I reported my own thoughts on her performance, and the film, just under a year ago.............
Even someone with my minority tastes in music can see that a failure to be moved by Edith Piaf should be
treated as evidence of a heart of stone.
La Môme, a sketchy but endearing film of her life, has been out for a couple of weeks in France and is doing great business.
A first attempt to see it, in the cinematic backwater of La Londes-les-Maures, ended in disappointment. If we were among no more than five customers watching Mel Gibson's Apocalypto a month earlier, we couldn't get anywhere a seat for La Môme despite arriving half an hour before it started.
So to neighbouring Hyères yesterday. Bookings by phone or internet are not allowed and it's a pain to drive all the way there and back without being sure, so we took the sad senior citizen option and turned up in good time for the 4.45pm screening at the Olbia.
A man some way to my right snored gently, and I couldn't help noticing that a young woman, who arrived in a short skirt and sat nearby, left at the end wearing jeans. But whatever drove him to his slumber, and her to seize an opportunity to change, I was hooked from the opening sequence showing Piaf as a grubby Parisian street urchin.
The plot darted this way and that through a life of glorious tragedy, her downfall predetermined by lifelong attachment to the bottle and eventually addiction to drugs.
I am sure it must barely have scraped at the surface, and the zig-zagging chronology was liable to induce dizziness.
For the purposes of the soundtrack, the voice was not always that of Piaf, but of Jil Aigrot.
In the end, however, I was convinced that the right artistic decisions had been taken and that Olivier Dahan had made a film of enormous merit with Marion Cotillard, utterly compelling in the title role, capturing Piaf's insecurity and awkwardness as well as the defiant spirit. It probably won't get beyond the art house circuit in Britain or America.
But what marvellous respite it offers from the French presidential elections, even if not everyone agrees with me and Gigi is destined to walk out in disgust at the early demise of her beloved Gérard Depardieu.
Recent Comments