Edith Piaf led an tumultoous life filled with music, drama, fame and notoriety. It only makes sense that when director Olivier Dahan was browsing pictures of the late singer in a bookstore, that he immediately knew she had to be his next project. Three years later hit theaters in France as La Môme (in English means 'the kid') and on June 8th the film will open stateside as La Vie en Rose. The film has already raised much critical acclaim throughout the festival circuit and garnered a huge box office reception in France.
The film moves back and forth through time but basically follows Edith from her sickly childhood in a brothel, to getting gigs in a Mafioso nightclub, to her finally being noticed, to recording albums and performing plays around the world. Unfortunately, her life was marred by a great deal of tragedy and addiction, which forced her into even poorer health. Although her life was cut short too soon, the spirit of Edith is still infectious, especially when channeled through this film.
Edith Piaf’s history was not easy to make into to a movie. Although she primarily resided in France, her career took her around the world from Parisian nightclubs to Carnegie Hall. Many people came and went throughout her life including Yves Montand, Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin and (arguably the love of her life) middleweight boxing champion Marcel Credan.
Dahan leads the film along with a sense of grace and elegance. The cinematography is fluid and scintillating. The performances are fresh and entirely believable and Marion Cotillard turns in an exceptional performance as Edith, portraying her from the age of sixteen to her death.
With a little more than a decades' worth of films under his belt, Dahan offers perhaps his best work to date and that confidence is demonstrated in how he treates his subject. Not many would try to channel a figure that has more relevance to the older generations then today’s youth. Dahan is quiet, reserved and knows what he wants out of his films. I met with Dahan at a press day in New York.
Q: How did you structure your film to avoid the common musical clichés?
OD: From the very beginning I wanted to put things in a certain order and try to avoid clichés in the storytelling itself. I didn’t want to make a biopic really, I wanted to make a portrait, which is pretty different.
Q: Did you map out how you wanted to structure it?
OD: No, no I wrote straight from the first page to the last. I didn’t have any plan, I just wrote. The structure came naturally. The first ten pages I wrote in Los Angeles over two years ago. I really didn’t want to write the film myself, I wanted the producer to hire a scriptwriter, but he wanted me to do it and I just wrote the first ten pages and went from there.
Q: Why did you not want to write the script?
OD: I don’t like to write, actually. It takes a lot of time, a lot of concentration and I’m too lazy most of the time (laughs). I can’t concentrate for more then a half hour.
Q: Why Edith Piaf?
OD: At first it was a photograph, a not well-known photograph so I don’t think you’ll know what I’m talking about. I often go into bookstore just to flip through books, I’m not an avid reader but I keep buying books. I was just looking through this photography book and I just fell on this special photo of Edith in her early years. She was about seventeen and looked like a punk rocker! It was so different then this iconic image most people have of her. The next page had a more traditional picture of her in a black dress and everything. It was the mix of the two pictures that really struck me as powerful.
Q: I understand this film had problems finding financial backing, do you think it’s because producers didn’t think Edith Piaf would be a commercially viable subject?
OD: At first people thought it was too old and dusty. Backers didn’t think Edith would translate well today. It took about a year for the money to come together and during that time I continued to work on the script.
Q: How is Edith Piaf seen in France by the younger generation?
Well it’s funny; after the movie was released in France everyone was surprised to see a lot of young people in the theaters, like between the ages on ten and fifteen. So a lot of young people really liked it and are now rediscovering her.
Q: Are there any other iconic figures you would like to make a film about?
OD: No, no I don’t like biopics, actually. For me La Vie en Rose is not a biopic, so I don’t think I’d like to make one. It’s not interesting to me to just tell the story of someone; I want to talk about feelings and emotions. I wasn’t really interested in the facts of Edith’s life, but the emotions and what went on inside.
Q: What interests you the most about filmmaking?
OD: I don’t think it’s an interest in one thing or another. It’s my way of talking; it’s just a question of communication. I don’t like to talk so much in life, I’m more comfortable with pictures. When I’m on the set I don’t feel like I’m working, I just feel natural.
Q: The casting of Marion (Cotillard) as Edith was one of the most amazing aspects of the film given whom Marion is and whom Edith was. Can you talk about that?
OD: There was no casting process actually, she was my first idea, I had her in mind since I began the writing process. I didn’t know her before, so we met at a bar in Paris and for about an hour we talked about Edith and I gave her the script. After that she accepted the part and began to read, listen and watch everything she could about Edith Piaf.
Q: What was the most difficult scene to shoot?
OD: Most of the time it’s the little sequences, like the hallway shots or a scene on the street. It’s never the big shots because those you are prepared for, it’s the little things that always become the big problems.
Q: You say you don’t like to rehearse, how do you prepare for shooting?
OD: I don’t prepare really because I trust my intuition for a lot of things and I don’t have the actors rehearse because I don’t like to use the actors minds before we film. I don’t know, when I’m on the set I don’t have a sense of abstraction, I point the camera and its either right or wrong. I don’t use any storyboards for that reason, I don’t think about what I’m going to shoot the day before. When everything comes together, it just works.
Q: Was there any reconstruction during the editing?
OD: No, the movie you see is the movie I intended from the beginning, as it was written.
Q: Where did you film the movie?
OD: We shot in a bunch of different locations. We had all of the sets built in Prague; we also shot scenes in Paris, Malibu, New York and Palm Springs.
Q: Do you have a favorite Edith Piaf song?
OD: Yes, it’s not a well known song though and I don’t think it’s available to the public. It translates into English as “Cry of her Heart.” The lyrics are just perfect, but…it’s very French.
Picturehouse Films releases La Vie en Rose in theatres this coming Friday, June 8th. Stay tuned for tomorrow for Benjamin's interview with the film's star Marion Cotillard.
