La Vie en Rose (The Passionate Life of Edith Piaf)

Film

Critics' choice

First published on 29 May 2009.

Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory. Cotillard’s throaty, Oscar-baiting imitation of Piaf is the film’s chief virtue, allowing the actress to alternate between two modes – impetuous gamine and frazzled junkie. But after dispensing with Piaf’s early years (singing lessons in a brothel, battle with blindness, teenage circus job), the movie falls into an interminable cycle of public performances and backstage crankiness, punctuated by three or four accidental deaths

by Ben Kenigsberg

In French with English subtitles

Where: Alliance Française de Singapour

When: 2 June; 8pm