Smash hit

Instead, Dahan concentrates on Piaf’s journey to the top and her desire to survive and thrive, no matter what life hurls at her: her discovery, singing on the streets of Paris, by nightclub owner Louis Leplée (played by Gérard Depardieu), who gave her a regular spot at his club, nicknamed her La Môme Piaf and helped her win her first recording contract. Dahan also shows us Piaf’s addictions: booze and later morphine, prescribed after a car accident. He also focuses on the postwar years, when America welcomed Piaf, and she fell in love with champion boxer Marcel Cerdan, who was married with children, a scandalous affair that would end, once again, in more tragedy. “He was the love of her life,” says Dahan, “and when he was killed in a plane crash it almost destroyed her.”

“My job was to cut,” says the director, recalling that the original script was almost twice as long as the 140-minute version now on screen. “And I put in the movie only what I wanted to say about her. There were a lot of interesting things that didn’t go in. It wasn’t about running through her hits and, even less so, through her celebrity acquaintances and lovers. I focused on the people who helped her build herself, so we see her manager and his assistant, but not Yves Montand, Charles Aznavour and other greats of the age. I was interested in the private Piaf: the woman, not the public icon.”

For Cotillard, becoming Piaf didn’t involve just a physical transformation. She had to re-create the multilayered Piaf personality – a woman who could swear like a trooper, drink most men under the table and hold court at a dinner table with a wicked wit and foul mouth. She was funny, but her temper was explosive and she would often lash out at those who were closest to her – the entourage who formed the buffer zone between Piaf and the world.

But Piaf was an artist and, as Dahan points out, just as wild as any of the rock’n’rollers who followed her – sex and drugs and chansons d’amour. “She was someone who, on the one hand, could be a tyrant and very egotistical,” says Cotillard, “and on the other someone who was very generous and giving. In a way she was like many other icons of music – Ray Charles, Johnny Cash. They have similar biographies. They are highly sensitive and able in one way to be happy, but they are also very self-destructive. And it took me a long time to understand that dark side. I had to understand it, because it was a big part of her. When you are just one year old and your mother abandons you and you search for love and don’t find it, that creates your biggest fear. For Piaf, her biggest fear was being alone. For her it was a bigger fear than death.”

BACKGROUND

• La Vie En Rose

• La Vie En Rose - Sunday Times review

BACKGROUND

• Poor chick: the life of Piaf

• Edith Piaf

• Playing Piaf is risky for a rising star

Piaf, the woman behind the icon

French chanteuse Edith Piaf packed a lot of drama into her short life – a new biopic reveals the woman behind the icon

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

Piaf would die in 1963, her frail body ravaged by cancer, an amazing life cut terribly short. “It was tragic she died so young,” says Cotillard. “But she did have the most incredible life. She wasn’t a victim, she was a survivor. I hope I’ve captured that.”

La Vie En Rose opens on Thursday

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