The 32-year-old Parisian Marion Cotillard could add an Oscar to her recent Golden Globe award and BAFTA (a first for France) for best actress in a leading role. She was chosen from hundreds of hopefuls to play the most famous of all French singers, Edith Piaf, in the highly successful 2007 film, La Vie en Rose.
The film darts back and forth through the decades, as a series of flashbacks evoked by the singer’s own memories. The role was particularly demanding because Cotillard had to appear as Piaf throughout her adult life (Pauline Burlet plays Edith as a child) and recreate the familiar image of a singer physically challenged and mentally unstable. Cotillard found a way of contracting her muscles from ribcage to waist to make herself seem smaller.
The portrayal of Piaf does not gloss over her tyrannical side. Says Cotillard, “She really loved people but her tyranny came from fear of being alone. I didn't know her, but when you're abandoned as a child, as she was, your fear about being alone is very hard to get rid of.”
Director Olivier Dahan decided from the outset that it was impossible to replicate Piaf’s uniquely distinct voice. He wanted to make the film sound as authentic as possible and decided to use recordings of Piaf for the majority of her performances, including the most famous, Milord and Je ne regrette rien. This left Cotillard with the stressful, demanding task of lip-synching her songs, which she achieved to perfection by forcing herself to watch some badly dubbed early French movies to establish how and where they had gone wrong.
From our February 2008 e-newsletter
