| French Actress Marion Cotillard Ensures the Legacy of Édith Piaf |
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 Marion Cotillard is getting some much-deserved Oscar buzz for her spot-on performance in "La Vie En Rose"   The real Édith Piaf in her prime  Marion Cotillard shines as Piaf in "La Vie En Rose"  "La Vie En Rose" director Olivier Dahan on the film set  Gérard Depardieu as Louis Leplée, the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf Born Édith Giovanna Gassion, the singer and actress--who died at 46 in October 1963--is enjoying this renewed interest through both a recent NYC Fringe Festival play, "Piaf: Love Conquers All," a retelling of her history through song and snippets [ed: running as a special encore until Sep. 9th at the Soho Playhouse] and through "La Vie En Rose," a striking new biopic that achingly retells her tough and tragic life. In "La Vie En Rose," French actress Marion Cotillard, previously known for her work in such films as "A Very Good Year," "Taxi," and "A Very Long Engagement," utterly transforms herself into Piaf; Cotillard who is maybe 5' 6" uncannily played the 4' 8" Piaf who was as a compact as a sparrow and was ravaged through drink, drugs and cancer by the time she died. With her bedroom eyes and convincing pout, Cotillard has always had her fans but with this performance she is being touted as Oscar-worthy. In this world, an international awareness of a particular subject is often achieved by finding common ground through film and music. So what better way to do that than by listen to Édith Piaf--either on stage or screen. edithpiafmovie.comQ: Having made such an outstanding transformation, what did you go through to inhabit this person; you had her history... but what were the difficulties involved in making yourself so much shorter and smaller? Marion Cotillard: It was not so hard. It was just work and trying to have fun with something so vertiginous. There were some technical parts which were hard, like lip-synching; and there was a technical part about the character, of course, because I didn't know anything about her life. I had to read some books and watch her a lot. I tried to gather all I could find--pictures, footage, and movies of her as an actress. But the most important thing was to try to understand who she was. This was not technical. It was something you can't really explain, like when you meet someone and you feel that you understand that person, so you will try because you want to. In discovering the lives of people, there are some things you like, and some things you don't. In order to understand someone entirely, you have to understand what you don't like and then abandon your judgment. And finally, when you abandon your judgment, you will maybe understand her heart and her soul. Q: She looked like she had fun yet there was so much tragedy in Édith's life. In dealing with so much tragedy--did you have to separate yourself from her yet be true to her at the same time? MC: I have never used my own personal life and will never use it to feed a character. I don't want to do that because I think it's dangerous for me to think of sad events in my own life in order to go into a certain emotion. I really don't want to live this. I'm not the person who will be sad about someone's life to be in those kind of emotions. I looked at her entire life and yes, it was sad, but she was a very [alive] person. She wanted to be happy; she loved to laugh, and she lived [enough for] 100 people. So as an actress, I found great pleasure playing this tragedy because those are huge emotions where you can express a lot of things and let go of a lot of things. Q: If you don't want to use anything from your life as a basis for the character, what did you draw on and how do you reach that character? MC: The emotion you give to the character, of course, is your emotion. It's as if you take the technical things of your emotions, the state of the emotions are created by your personal life and all that you have lived, yes. It's hard to explain because an emotion is just not technical. When I read the script for the first time, it touched me so deeply. And I used this emotion, it's my emotion with this story. I have other emotions which are very personal, but this story gives me emotions which must be in relation to my own intimate emotions, because it's a whole thing. But I will never try to think of something very sad in my life to try to do something, because I will be sad for hours. When you do an emotional scene--like the death scene of [her husband, the boxer/actor] Marcel Cerdan--after that, you're empty, but you're fulfilled as well; you feel good if you think of a loss of yourself. After that scene, that thought will still be in your mind and you won't [lose] it. It's something you did [in your own life]. Q: Basically the film uses her voice and you lip-sync--was there ever a concern about deciding to have you sing or not sing? MC: I love to sing and sang in a few movies. But we only had a few months with the money we had to do this movie. It's obvious that in a few months I couldn't imitate or have that unique voice she had worked on for years. Three months was absolutely not enough time. So if I had had the time--and I don't know how much time I would've needed--I would have tried. At the beginning of the project, it was a desire of Olivier [Dahan, the director] to have Piaf's voice. We [did] not have all the recordings we needed, especially the ones she sang when she was on the street--there were no recordings of songs like "Fréhel" and "Mistinguett"--so we needed someone to do this. We found an amazing singer, [Jil Aigrot]. She's from Cannes, which is in the south of France. They have a special accent and we asked her to have the old Parisian accent; not to sing too well either because it was at the beginning of Piaf. She committed herself entirely, worked hard, and really, did an amazing job. Q: Do you have any favorite songs by Piaf? MC: Yes! Many. I love "Les Amants d'un Jour," I love "Milord," I love "Padam"--especially "Padam." I love "La Foule." And then I love a few songs that nobody knows. I have listened to almost all those songs, and there are many. Q: Do you still listen to her? MC: No, but I still sing sometimes "Correqu'et Reguyer." It's kind of slang. Even I couldn't understand everything. But I studied the song. It's the one that I "sing" in the scene when she does her first show. There are two songs, something very calm, and she's like this [gestures]--this is "Correqu'et Reguyer." |