UNITED KINGDOM: Edit Piaf biopic 'La Vie en Rose' launches a celebration of French cinema in London

Edith Piaf biopic 'La Vie en Rose' received its UK premiere on Thursday (March 29), launching a four-day celebration of French cinema in the British capital. Director Olivier Dahan and actress Marion Cotillard, whose portrayal of the singing legend has been lauded by the critics, attended the premiere and launch of "A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema" in London's Mayfair. 'La Vie en Rose', called 'La Mome' ('The Kid') in France, portrays the tiny singer from the age of 20 to her death at just 47. The movie follows Piaf from the highs of international fame and a passionate affair to the lows of loneliness, death, painful illness and drink and drug dependency. Cotillard lip-synched over original Piaf recordings and the soundtrack features many of her most famous songs including 'Non, je ne regrette rien', 'La Vie en Rose' and 'Milord'. But it wasn't the singing the 31-year-old actress found most challenging, rather than acting out the last years of Piaf's life. "To play an old lady," Cotillard said when asked about the hardest part of the intense and emotional project. "Because at the end of her life she was only 47 but she looked 80 and she acted like a child, so all these in (for) a 30-year-old person, it was... but I didn't see that as a challenge. I saw that as the most incredible present but it was not a challenge," she added. The actress, who was recently seen in 'A Good Year' with Russell Crowe, said getting the mannerism, voice and style of Piaf right had required a lot of work and simply an understanding of who she was. "I worked. And I tried to understand her, to understand her energy, her heart, her soul, maybe. And yes, that's it," she said. In the movie, which tracks Piaf's life from childhood to her death, scenes from the second half of Piaf's life are interspersed with flashbacks to childhood, which she spent in poverty, much of it in a brothel where she lost her sight for several years. Dahan, who co-wrote the screenplay and spent years doing research into the singer's life, said the end-product was not a biopic but an attempt to understand what happens when art and everyday life meet. "No, for me, I didn't want to make a biopic. I wanted to make like an intimate portrait of an artist. Not even a star, but just an artist, normal artist. And to see how art and life are mixing together to maybe create something a little bit more different," he said. The film also stars Sylvie Testud, Gerard Depardieu, Pacal Greggory and Marc Barbe. It will open in cinemas across the UK on June 22. The celebration of French movies, 'A Rendez-vous with French Cinema', runs from March 29 to April 1. The festival includes screenings of various new French films as well as a programme of masterclasses, meetings and screenings of short films. The screenings, which include films such as 'Tell No One', 'A Few Days in September', 'The Singer' and 'Transylvania' will be attended by directors and actors. French actor and director Jean Marc Barr, who was joined at the gala launch by a host of French and British actors including Jeremy Irons, Joana Preiss and Lambert Wilson, said the four-day event carried a huge importance in promoting today's movies in a crowded market place. "Really, the importance is, you know, the Americans have a huge market and they control a lot of the markets around the world and over time the French have had less and less influence for example in films being sold around the world and Unifrance is a group who organises this festival, they are trying to counteract that and trying to introduce us to the British as well as the Germans as well as the Italians and the Spanish with the intention of showing our young stars for example and trying to get an interest in French cinema like it was happening in the 60s when there was Alan Delon and Brigitte Bardot. The Americans have a huge machine for marketing and getting their product out, Unifrance is a little bit trying to do the same thing but with a French product," he said.

ITN Source | April 5, 2007

Tags:. .germans. .rose. .premiere. .legend. .jean