It was difficult to choose a film to watch today that would work with the soundtrack from yesterday’s film still ringing in my ears. While I couldn’t think of anything to watch that would match the eccentricity of Annette, one film did stick out in my mind as an apt follow up for different reasons. After two and a half hours highlighted by some of Marion Cotillard’s singing, I decided to visit the acting, and singing, performance for which she has her Oscar.

La Vie En Rose (2007, Dir. Olivier Dahan)

I am going to be honest; I do not have much to say about this movie. I have spent many of these daily entries talking about the pitfalls of the standard Biopic. La Vie En Rose falls for each and every one of them. By attempting to tell the entire life story of Édith Piaf, the film is an unwieldy 140 minutes, yet no part of the signer’s life is given adequate screen time. The film is left feeling both bloated and slight at the same time. Jumping back and forth between eras doesn’t do the film any benefits and leads to more confusion. This is a technique that can work well for Biopics that choose to focus on exactly two times in the character’s life, but since La Vien En Rose is all encompassing, this technique just muddles plot points, especially as the age difference between Ediths diminishes.

For all my misgivings about La Vie En Rose, I can not begrudge it the Oscars that it won. Marion Cotillard is brilliant in the lead performance, and her voice carries the film through its many musical moments. Similarly, the makeup department winning makes a lot of sense. Cotillard plays Piaf from the young age of 19 (Cotillard was 32 at the time) to age 47 where Piaf suffering from serious liver damage looked twice as old. The makeup department was responsible for this range to be possible.