List Price: $27.95You Pay Only: $21.99 You Save: $5.96 (21%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0026359441226
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 13, 2007
Running Time: 141 minutes
Sales Rank: 481
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Picturehouse and HBO Films present a critically-acclaimed biopic about the legendary international singing icon Edith Piaf whose voice and talent captivated the world. Starring award-winner Marion Cotillard (A Very Long Engagement A Good Year) in an astonishing performance the film is a portrait of a remarkable artist born into poverty who survived using the only gift she had ? her voice. Piaf?s tragic life was a constant battle to sing and survive to live and love with no regrets.Running Time: 141 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/BIOGRAPHY UPC: 026359441226 Manufacturer No: 94412
Amazon.com:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - See it for Marion Cotillard's performance
My knowledge of Edith Piaf extends to a few of her songs played many times over the years on the local classical FM station's once a week show of folk and other music. I knew nothing of her life.
"La Vie En Rose" with its dizzying flashbacks and flashforwards and cutaways doesn't really tell me much I wanted to know about Piaf. She led a tragic life of abandonment as a child, alcoholism, drug addiction, cripping arthritis, several marriages, many lovers, a lost child and more. Her talent as a singer rescued her from the obscurity that otherwise would have been her fate.
Piaf was a magnificient singer. I have no idea of what the lyrics were in English, but in French just the sound of her voice was entrancing.
The saving graces of this film are Marion Cotillard's acting and the dubbing of Edith Piaf's voice. Cotillard's performance is spellbinding as Piaf ages from her 20's to her untimely death of liver cancer at 47.
The script and direction seem common. You could substitute Janis Joplin or Judy Garland and make practically the same film. The fast cut style with all the flashbacks, flashforwards and cutaways is dizzying and does little to provide any understanding of Piaf, the person. We see her as the chronically abused child and teen. Then the imperious, demanding success. And the regretful dying woman. Only once do we see Piaf reasonably happy - when she is having an affair with French boxer Marcel Cerdan, who will not leave his wife ... Read More
Rating:  - edith would be turning over in her grave
I wasn't too familiar with Edith Piaf before seeing this movie. I had heard of her only because she's featured in one of my favorite books, Legends: The Century's Most Unforgettable Faces. After seeing this movie, I'm still not that interested in her and here's why:
Her character is annoying. I think Marion Cotillard won an Oscar because she got Edith Piaf's mannerisms, voice and behavior down to a science but that doesn't mean that the ACTUAL performance is Oscar-worthy. Edith Piaf is a drunk, clumsy, alcoholic lush that literally gets slapped into being a singer (and by halfway through the movie, I wanted to slap her and I'm a woman!).
The problem is that the character development, like the movie is choppy.
By the time the movie really shows who she is at a certain age, the frames change and then we see her at a completely different age. Instead of growing up with her onscreen, like in better biographical movies like Elvis (the one with Camryn Manheim), Ray (based on the life of Ray Charles) and Evita (which won Madonna a well-deserved Golden Globe), the movie can't decide if we should watch her die, watch her grow up or watch her act up.
Another problem that I had is that too little screen time is given to the death of her child, her only child, that she's loses in the '30's when she is only 20 years old. At the very end, she mourns for the child and I actually felt sorry for her. If the movie had introduced this important part of the story sooner, ... Read More
Rating:  - Great Performance but...........
Marion Cotillard delivers a stunning performance as the great Edith Piaf. She becomes Piaf. Christie Laume, sister of Theo Sarapo, Edith's husband when she passed away in 1963, says on her weblog, Marion captured Piaf sowell; the way she walked, talked, her very character. Being a long time Piaf fan, I was looking forward to seeing this movie. I must say that despite the realism that the director and Cotillard brought to the screen, I was rather disappointed by the focus being primarily on the pain and suffering that was surely part of Piaf's life. In that way the film is rather one dimensional. I was also frustrated by the non-linear chronology; starting out in her final years and moving to her childhood, the film jumps randomly to various periods throughout her life, culminating on her deathbed in 1963. Missing from the story is her stage and movie career, life during Nazi occupied Paris, and marriage to her 2nd husband Theo Sarapo, who was 23 years her junior and which caused quite a stir at the time, it is a story in itself. Although the marriage was only to last a year, she and Theo were happy and the director was looking to show Piaf as miserable, so it didn't fit. That is what disappointed me most, the focus on misery.
The depth of her character is not really explored. She is portrayed as an obnoxious drunk and drug addict who has a passion for singing. She definitely had a drug and alcohol problem and was difficult at times. These are the human frailties and shortcomings that many ... Read More
Rating: - Ne Pas de Wire Hangers! Pas de Wire Hangers, jamais!!
Marion Cotillard one-hundred-and-ten-percent deserved her Academy Award for Best Actress based on her sheer commitment to this role, and for the unwavering belief I had in her performance: I don't know much about Edith Piaf, but from teen to crone, Cotillard's rendition of the script is consistent and enthralling.
A pity, then, that such a talent and such a performance should belong to what is essentially La Mommie Dearest Francaise. "Christina! Apportez-moi la Ax!".
Little Edith's life starts in miserable neglect and ends in neglectful misery... ...oh, and she becomes a famous singer in the middle. The problem with this movie is the screenplay: you know how in a TV miniseries events flash forward from crisis to crisis with no time for emotional development in the middle? That's what happens here. For all its high-fallotin' trappings, "La Vie En Rose" is essentially a pot-boilerish soap opera movie, with little to no character development for anyone but Cotillard - and even then, Cotillard's script ranges from truculent teen to truculent old lady. There's not enough exploration given to any one facet of Piaf's character, or to the possible consequences of Piaf's early tragedies.
And tragedies there are! Early, middle and late life tragedies... ...two whole hours of tragedies! There's one particularly lovely scene where Cotillard's talent is allowed to express something other than fear, rage or sadness: there's a real sense of childlike wonder and mutual adoration when ... Read More
Rating: - Perhaps the Finest Biographical Performance In The History of Cinema
The legendary Edith Piaf (1915-1963) was essentially a street person who possessed little emotional self-control and whose often difficult life included alcoholism, crippling car accidents, drug addiction, and a series of scandals that included accusations of Nazi sympathies during World War II. But for all this, Piaf was a truly gifted artist whose talents ultimately outweighed her tempestuous personality and outrageous lifestyle: her fans, her friends, and her lovers seemed able to forgive anything when confronted with the scope of her vocal gifts. Then as now, she is regarded as the sound of the soul of France.
It would seem artistic and commercial suicide for any actress to play the role of one so well-recalled and so intensely beloved as Piaf--but not only actress Marion Cotillard dare risk it, she is remarkably successful in the role, offering what is easily one of the great performances in cinema history. Once the film progresses beyond Piaf's childhood, Cotillard appears in virtually every shot, making LA VIE EN ROSE extremely dependent on her performance--and she carries it off in every scene. The illusion is astonishing.
The film has an unusual structure, darting back and forth in time between Piaf as a child, Piaf during her final years, Piaf at the peak of powers. (Perhaps wisely, however, director Olivier Dahan and the script carefully excludes mention of Piaf's tendency to party with the Nazis in occupied Paris.) Cotillard makes the shifts with tremendous ease, as ... Read More
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