Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 11/13/2007 Run time: 141 minutes Rating: Pg13

Edith Piaf is the subject of La Vie en Rose, director Olivier Dahan's powerful if emotionally redundant biographical film about the iconic French superstar whose life, as depicted here, seems to have been a numbing succession of tragedies interrupted on occasion by artistic triumph. Dahan's portrait begins with Piaf's stay in a brothel as a young girl. Left to the care of her grandmother (who runs the place) after her father pulls her away from a narcissistic mother, Piaf undergoes significant health problems and grows up to sing on the street in lieu of outright prostitution. The film pulses along with the usual biopic rhythms, with pivotal moments in the life of Piaf (played as an adult by Marion Cotillard) turning up regularly only to be smacked aside by the unseen hand of perpetual misfortune. There's the impresario (Gerard Depardieu) who recognizes Piaf's great but raw talent only to have a run-in with the criminal element around her. There's the heavyweight fighter (Marcel Cerdan) who becomes the love of Piaf's life but can't be with her. Drug addiction, random car accidents, tax problems, you name it, it's all here, topped by an unnerving revelation that pops up in La Vie en Rose's final moments. After awhile, with such a concentration of bad news squeezed into 140 minutes, one begins to wish Dahan had taken a more expansive approach to Piaf's life and times. But the film is never less than interesting, and the lead performance by Cotillard is often astonishing. --Tom Keogh

My wife and I like the singing of Edith Piaf. When the DVD of a movie about Ms. Piaf came available, we bought it.

As we watched the performance, we sat in our chairs with our mouth agape. The acting is so superb as to whisk you back to Paris of the '30's with a young woman sining in the streets and dazzling her audiences.

Marion Cotillard won an Academy Award for this part and I know why. She is more than spectacular.

La vie en Rose is a classic.
Unbelievable performance from Marion Cotillard.
Interesting cinematography and suspense building cadence.
Sometime hard to follow with its time changes but worth every minute.

I'm a guy who normally doesn't watch a lot of melodramas, but this film just stunned me....in every capacity. When it was over, all I could mutter was "wow!" It makes me want to know more about Piaf.

In addition to the great cinematography, the story was terrific, an extremely powerful one. I can't believe how mesmerizing Marion Cotillard was in the lead role of "Edith Piaf."

"Props" also for (1) Tetsuo Nagata's photography; (2) Cotillard's acting and her incredibly big-and-sad eyes which made Edith look unique; (3) the voice of Piaf. What a singer! Thankfully, we get to hear a lot of her songs in here; (4) Oliver Dahan's superb direction, and (5) the emotional story, which keeps you riveted to the screen for over two hours.

Kudos also to the makeup department, which did an incredible job of transforming Cotillard into someone who looked a lot older than her years,. and to the two little girls who played Edith as a 5-year-old (Marion Chevalier) and as a 10-year-old (Pauline Burlet). They, too, were terrific.

Yes, there are flaws and/or puzzling omissions. I was surprised the World War II years were totally bypassed and that Piaf losing her child was almost an afterthought near the end of the film. That should have been a bigger part of her story. However, people have to realize that one can't cover everything in a famous person's biography in just a 140-minute film. There are bound to be many things left out, and you have to accept that.

Nonetheless, I still was thoroughly entertained and thought it was great and wonderful film-making.

This film had an enormous success when it came out and it was the winner of quite a few awards, Oscars and Caesars. But the DVD is already on sale, and at a dramatic low price. The film was well made, rich indeed and the actress did a fabulous composition to fit with her part, because it was only a part that was dictated by the author and director. All the nostalgic liked it for a short while because it was some music from a distant past but so few of Piaf's songs were actually performed, and in their entirety, that the film lost its nostalgic appeal very fast. But the worse was still to come because the composite portrait painted on this screen has little to do with the real woman. So many things are absent. Her deep connections with Jews during the war for one, and after the war for two, with her famous Exodus song. And the extremely devout Catholic mirage projected onto that woman is absurd, to the point of ignoring her last husband nearly totally, since he was a Greek Orthodox. The woman is betrayed into a neurotic even psychotic capricious clown that kills herself with morphine and other drugs, willfully and consciously out of foolishness, love seen as a derangement, and plain suicidal conduct. She wasn't that. She was warm, loving, extremely attentive to others and many other qualities that are ignored and even rejected so that she appears as a crazy Catholic that is attached, in the most derogative Buddhist meaning, to a cross and a Saint and Jesus. I was asked recently to produce a note on her "Jewishness" and I was embarrassed because in spite of all the links she had with Jews and Judaism and Israel, it is difficult to find in her life a real testimony about her religion, especially with her last marriage being in the Orthodox faith. And I think that this bigotry of the film explains why it is already nearly given away to anyone who wants to grab it. I personally feel betrayed by this film because I lived that period in a completely different light with widely accepted maybe untruths but magical and mythical stories about this great lady that has inspired so many other artists.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

To be honest, I have not had the time to view this Movie, but I am sure it will be great, will watch it this weekend. A friend of mine watched it and she loved it. Diffently a 5 Star Video.

Thanks

Chris Baker