Admittedly, until this week I knew nothing of La Vie en Rose ("Life in Pink") or it's star, French actress Marion Cotillard, who won an Oscar this week for her portrayal of French singer, Édith Piaf. However, after seeing a montage of Cotillard's beautiful tits and soft curves, in several sexually graphic scenes in some French flick from 2002, I want to see more. The film, I am told is Une Affaire Privée ("A Private Affair") by Guillaume Nicloux, a mystery thriller where Cotillard plays vixen Clarisse Entoven, long before she was known to American audiences.
There definitely needs to be more tit-kissing in American cinema. It's the right thing to do when faced with a perfectly good pair of knockers.
The film biopic reads:
It's been six months since Rachel Siprien disappeared. At the request of Rachel's mother, private detective François takes over the investigation. The young woman's personality, complex and multi-faced, is part of a strange network made-up of her best friend Clarisse, her ex-boyfriend, her stepfather, her neighbors and everyone who knowns her well or even sightly. François begins to frequent these various friends and acquaintances, and PENETRATES Rachel's daytime and nocturnal habitat. He spies, asks disturbing questions, and fills in the blanks intentionally left by those he questions. His private life, already well complicated by an ex-wife and a mistress with a jealous husband, becomes more complicated by an affair with Clarisse and by problematic relations with the police when Rachel's body is found. François takes the blows, dishes some out, and little by little puts together a picture of the real Rachel Siprien. Disappear means being eternally reborn.
Ok I don't get that last sentence, nor this montage of sexy clips. There's no way around it, French culture is a bit weird. One minute they're having a calm conversation and smoking a couple fags, then BAM, she's on the floor getting belted. But I do know that once I can get my grubby paws on this film, I will be experiencing my own la vie en rose.
As far as Édith Pilaf goes - I never realized what a fucked up life she led. It's better than anything out of a modern day tabloid: Brittney's got nothin' on her. After doing a bit of research on this Oscar-worthy portrayal, I stumbled across the most intriguing life biography I have ever read.
Édith Giovanna Gassion (her name was later changed to "Piaf" which is French for "sparrow" because of her short stature and warbling voice) is born to an Algerian-Italian café singer mom and a French street/circus acrobat dad in 1915. She is abandoned as a baby and left to be raised by her grandmother for a very brief time. However, at the age of two or there-abouts, her father goes off to fight in WWI, but before doing so he drops baby Edith off with her mother, who is now working as a prostitute in a French brothel. While there, Edith supposedly goes blind from an eye infection, but gets her vision back through the holy intervention of St. Therese and the prostitutes' charity...
Later on, she is almost shot by a pimp who wants to whore her out, but luckily her beautiful voice and a caring producer save her from her mother's fate. She is also implicated in the mob murder of said French music producer, but later acquitted. This stuff goes on and on, that is until she dies of liver cancer at the ripe "old" age of 47.
[Video Montage found by way of WWTDD. DVD cover art for Une Affaire Privée courtesy of the Marion Cotillard fan site.]
