When I viewed La Vie En Rose, I brought to the theater a memory of the haunting song, “Milord,” rendered to American audiences in the early 1960s by French songstress Edith Piaf. With its honky-tonk piano accompaniment, wavering through elation and despair, “Milord” was Edith Piaf’s expression of tired love, aided always by endurance into jaded, temporal passion.
I walked out of La Vie En Rose feeling like I had lived the lonely life of Edith Piaf. As someone who hasn’t paid to see a movie twice since “A Hard Day’s Night” played the Earl Theater, I promptly reversed my lifelong trend and went back to see La Vie En Rose again. Ms. Cotillard had brought every nuance, every expression of Ms. Piaf into her performance.
Now audiences have the great pleasure of experiencing the historical figure of Evelyn Frechette through Marion Cotillard’s performance in the film Public Enemies. I must admit, that in the early rumors of casting, while I received calls from other actresses asking for tips on the image of Evelyn Frechette, I hoped Ms. Cotillard would call me also.
“I really loved you as Edith Piaf,” I envisioned myself gushing into the phone. “Evelyn really loved John Dillinger, and Ms. Cotillard, you are so good at depicting the sadness of lost love….”
-Ellen Poulsen
