La Vie en Rose

Marion Cotillard plays French songstress legend and cultural icon Edith Piaf in the magnificent biographical drama by Olivier Dahan. The sprawling historical epic slips back and forth through her life, from 20-year-old street singer and hard-living urchin to superstar concert hall vocalist to frail icon, bent and palsied from a life of drink, drugs and high living. Cotillard is brilliant in every incarnation, thanks to elaborate makeup and a vivid, defiant physical performance; even in her last days, she never loses the spark of the sassy street kid who muscled her way into polite company. But the film tends to leap from traumatic moments to quiet reveries with little apparent pattern, which confuses an already complicated timeline. It's really less a biography than the sketch of a melodramatic life of triumphs and tragedies, and a passionate woman who favored emotion and impulse over reason and restraint. Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner and Gérard Depardieu co-star. The DVD features the far-too-brief seven-minute "Stepping Into Character," little more than a promotional French-language featurette with the director and the star.