----snip-----But (Olivier) Dahan's filmmaking damn near sabotages the performance. Dahan understands that Piaf's life is the stuff of melodrama, but instead of just setting it all up there on the screen, plain old Hollywood-style, he has to chop it up and reconstitute it -- as if Piaf's life story, so elemental in both its triumphs and its sadness, needed to be dressed up by technique. His approach draws more attention to the filmmaking than it does to the life. Dahan seems to believe that chronology is bourgeois: Pure storytelling is all fine and dandy, but he wants us to know he's making art.
Putting it bluntly, I got lost. One minute she's young, next minute she's old, she dies, she comes back, she's young again, she's older, she's old and having flashbacks, she's half dead, she's really dead...then she's back.... then.... and I can't keep track. Especially trying to read subtitles in French... so I have to glance up and figure out who is who... and what year it is...and I can't keep track of husbands or lovers.... and the story line got completely lost. Poof.
But what a performance by Marion Cotillard! I believed in her... I was fascinated by her. There were times I saw the inner beauty of Edith shine right through...and other times I saw Edith again in her demanding, 'I don't give a damn what you think'-mode.... just ripping through the scene with a depth of character far beyond a 30 year old actress. Bravo! Cotillard deserved the award for sure.
The movie--- is terrible though. It's a fractured mess. Maybe someone could re-edit it.
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