posted
I checked and couldn't find a thread on this, but I did get some really odd results when I searched, so maybe I missed it. I was mildly interested in this before Marion won the award for playing famed French singer Edith Piaf in this the movie of her life (for both of them). It was at the bottom of my Netflix list, and I intended on getting to it, eventually, and then I heard a snippet of the music while I had the Oscars on in the background (this is also how I decided to move "Once" up my queue, but I haven't watched that yet) and decided to move it up a bit. But then the wait for it went from "available" to "long wait." I despaired, but it said I could watch it online. I had before decided against downloading Netflix's movie view, because I generally hate downloading much of anything off the internet on this computer. But, I'd made an exception a couple weeks ago for the Amazon Mp3 dowloader, so I figured why not, and I watched the movie over Netflix.
It was amazing.
I might not consider it to be one of the greats, if only because it was so disjointed that at points it was somewhat hard to follow. I wasn't always sure what was going on, they didn't really explain a whole lot, and it jumped back and forth a lot. I didn't know of Edith Piaf before I saw this. I've had a passing fancy with some French music before this, a song here and a song there, but I was totally blown away by the music in the movie, all of which is Edith, and Marion Cotillard lipsyncs. I don't see how anyone could have tried to play the role and NOT have lipsynched. I don't really know the life of Piaf, so, it's hard to say how well Cotillard's portrays her, but Cotillard, regardless of how close she is to reality, portrays an amazing character. Before the Oscars I think it was on Leno, they went around asking who people thought would win (might have been Larry King) and a lot of people said "that French girl, just because she's foreign" and I guess I sort of laughed and figured they were right, as I often think the Oscars tend to award the artsiest or less popular movies just because they are in vogue or whatever. But if I thought that, I was very, very wrong.
I won't give away the plot, but I'll say that the woman's life is tragic and incredible, her music is stunning, and the acting is very well done. I'm trying to find a good cd of hers to purchase, but there are many to choose from. I might just mix and match and download individual mp3s from Amazon.
My only real complaint is that the subtitles weren't as good as I might have expected. I know just enough French to know that they didn't quite get it right in a lot of places. The singing I can let go, as translating songs if often quite difficult if you want the right feeling to come through, but, even just regular conversations were different. The meaning I guess was the same, it was just weird for me. People who don't know any French won't be bothered at all, so don't worry.
If anyone knows of a good Edith Piaf cd to get, point me in that direction. To everyone else, rent the movie if you get the chance, it was fantastic. Piaf sings with a lot of emotion, and with a lot of sheer power. I can see why France loved her so much.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It is sad. Sometimes it's hard to feel bad for her because she seems to bring so many problems upon herself, but, it also seems that for every self destructive thing she does, she recovers and gets back on track only to have another unfortunate thing happen to her totally outside her control, which only reinforces her problems.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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