Marion Cotillard & Olivier Dahan
La Vie En Rose Q&A
To produce a film about the iconic French chanteuse Edith Piaf was always going to need a special creative partnership. But few may have predicted that it would take a young director like Olivier Dahan, last seen helming the Luc Besson-scripted sequel Crimson Rivers 2, and the beautiful actress Marion Cotillard, known to international audiences for her work in Big Fish and A Very Long Engagement. The result is La Vie En Rose, a complex work that traces Piaf’s life from her humble, poverty-stricken beginnings to the height of her fame and her tragic love affair with boxer Marcel Cerdan. As far as Cotillard goes, it’s undeniably the finest role of the 31 year-old actress’ career to date. So convincing is her transformation into the diminutive but feisty ‘little sparrow’, as Piaf was called, she’s almost unrecognisable as the charming ingenue who wooed Russell Crowe in A Good Year in 2006. Below, both Dahan and Cotillard speak about the process of bringing La Vie En Rose to the screen.
Q: How long have you been obsessed with this film?
OD: I’ve never been obsessed but I have been working on it for three years. The writing process took one year, and then a few months to get the money and then to really make the movie, it takes one year.
Q: How was the process of finding someone to play this icon?
OD: First, I never wanted to make a movie about an icon. I wanted to make a portrait of a woman, an artist, so it’s a big difference. I don’t think a lot about things in life. I just try to feel and let my intuition drive me. So for Marion Cotillard, she was my first choice. It’s very strange because I didn’t know her before. And when I started writing the very first page of the script, I wondered who could play her and I said to myself, ‘OK, Marion Cotillard’ but I didn’t know her personally at this time. I’d seen her in one or two movies, that’s all. I know she’s much prettier and much taller than Piaf, and it’s very strange. When I first told my close friend about my choice, he said, ‘Really, are you sure?’ Even Marion’s friends thought it was very strange. But I don’t know. I knew just one thing. I knew that to find a tragedian rather than a comedienne is rare. Just one or two actresses can play as a tragedian – [Isabelle] Adjani for example. And I thought that Marion had this kind of magic because she’s not really on the ground. Always in life…when you meet her for the first time, she’s like this. I really wanted to have someone ‘light’ as Piaf. She was not grave all the time; she was funny.
Q: Marion, how scared were you to play this role?
MC: I think that my brain did something to protect myself from fear. As if I only realised how big and how difficult it was, when it was done. Like at the beginning, I felt as if I had to climb a huge mountain but I looked once at how far and how up high it was…but I only noticed it once. After, I was just trying to climb without thinking how high it was. And then, at the end, I looked back and I saw how far I’d come.
Q: Did you view this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
MC: It’s true that it’s a marvellous role. I had to cover the age of 19 to over 40 years old. I didn’t know Edith Piaf’s life too well so I had to discover it. Then I emerged and I needed imagination, because she was a very good actress and it helped me to be a good actress. I really had to work very hard and I had to find room for two people, meaning the persona I was impersonating and myself. Olivier was a great help there. It was not just an imitation of Edith Piaf, I wanted to do more than that. So we really try to give her life. And we did that, all of us, together.
Q: How did it feel to see yourself transformed into her, when you looked in the mirror?
MC: It was funny. But the thing is, the process to arrive at that time, when we were all happy and ready, was so long that when I first looked at me and we thought it would work, I just wanted to go on the set and start.
Q: Did you know much about Piaf as a child? I guess she must’ve been an icon in France.
MC: Well, she was a national symbol…but what was hard was to play a lady who ages almost twenty years. The fact that she was an icon didn’t worry me as much because I had to concentrate on her and not on my fear of doing this, because the thing is, I had in my hands – in that script – a great, great role. I just had to work and not be afraid of the thing that wouldn’t…
Q: Well, it was out of your control, how she is perceived…
MC: Yes, yes. It was Olivier’s vision, and then mine, and then all the people who would take part in that project.
OD: I didn’t know really much about her before I started. I had the idea, to make a film about her, from a single photograph. Not with the sound of her voice, not this way, but by a photograph. It’s a very old one, and her name on the photo is not Edith Piaf yet. I mean she’s really young – no older than 18. It’s a photo from the Thirties, and she’s with her friend and they’re dressed like punks in the street! The attitude, the look – everything in this photograph is so far from the icon that we know the black dress and everything. It’s like two different worlds. And I’ve tried to find the link between this very first photograph and the icon. The gap between the two of them was interesting.
Q: Is it hard to grow up in France and not be raised on Piaf, though?
OD: No. Not so much. A lot of French people, like me, knows some of her songs, because you can’t escape them on the radio. And every French person knows a bit about her life – mostly about Marcel Cerdan. So when I start to read, because I’ve read a lot of books – everything actually – about her, I started to really discover her and her life. Everything that this first photograph doesn’t really show so much. It was very surprising and very exciting to really dip into this character.
Q: The structure of the film – why did you build the film the way you did?
OD: I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I had no plan or nothing. It’s a first draft. Just one draft – I’m a little bit lazy! For me to write, I don’t like it. I don’t like to be for hours in a room. So when I start to write a scene, I try to make it as best as I can and then forget it. It’s done.
Q: The revelation of her dead child, we only hear of this in the final scenes. Why is that?
OD: The real Piaf didn’t talk so much about her daughter and it was hard to find information about her. There is just one terrible sentence of Piaf – where she says, ‘I have no photo of her and I’ve almost forgot the face of my daughter.’ And I tried to translate this sentence in the movie. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she never forgot, for sure. Even in the Forties and Fifties, she talks about taking drugs and alcohol, things that were taboo. But about the loss of her child, she was silent – so I tried to respect that.
Q: Was it hard to shed the role once you finished?
MC: Yes. I was a little bit ashamed by the time it took me to get out completely – ashamed because I thought I wasn’t strong enough to stop the process right away. And I thought it’s just normal. I pictured it that way. For example, if I told you that for more than four months you will talk with this high-pitched voice, I defy you to go back to your normal voice straight away. And when I realised this, I told myself, ‘OK, just let go. You’re going to be tall again and have a beautiful light voice again.’ I just took some vacations, and went back to my life and see how it was beautiful.
Q: So you didn’t rush headlong into another film?
MC: No. Before playing Piaf, I worked for three years without stopping and ending with this movie. So I really needed to go back to my life, because it’s in my life that I find the inspiration and the desire to tell stories. If all the time you are someone else, you don’t know who you are anymore and you don’t have any ideas or any desires to tell stories.
Q: What is Edith Piaf’s role today, for your generation?
MC: She’s a legend. She’s a French legend. It’s not my generation of course. When I was about 20 I started getting interested in French chansons but a different type of chansons, not necessarily Edith Piaf. Yeah, she sang a different kind of chansons. I think she always was very modern, she was very modern in her time. I think that she still manages to reach even younger generations. She still moves them. I would say she did move me. There are some people who don’t listen to this kind of music and you are nevertheless moved by her chansons, by her singing, because she was a very good singer and interpreter of the songs. That, of course, is not linked to our generation or the time we’re living in.
Q: How do you see Edith’s story as relevant to our time?
OD: That’s a difficult question. Maybe three years ago, I needed to do it. Now I don’t know for people what can be the point of it. I wanted to make a portrait of an artist and talk about her life and her art, and how the two are combined.
Q: Are there other films about Piaf?
OD: There is a film by Claude LeLouch, Édith et Marcel, but that concentrated on their love affair – just two years of her life.
Q: How did you find the lip-synching to Piaf’s songs?
MC: It’s more difficult than singing. If you put aside the matter of the voice, lip-synching is a very difficult exercise. To be close to the reality you have to be more than accurate. You have to put all together the technique, when she was singing like no one! Because it’s not your breath, you have to understand the breath of someone else and what is very important in the lip-synch is the silence and the breath.
OD: It was the only real work that I asked Marion to do. For example, we never did rehearsal or reading. We really work in the same way. I didn’t have any storyboard and she had no rehearsal. She didn’t want to rehearse.
Q: What did you learn about Piaf that you didn’t know before?
MC: I learnt everything because I didn’t know anything! I didn’t even know that she had that love story with Marcel Cerdan, which is one of the biggest and most well known events of her life. What surprised me was the succession of great happiness and terrifying tragedy in her life. As far as I know, she is the only female Pygmalion figure – I don’t know of any other woman like her. That strength and desire, when she felt talent, she couldn’t help but help that talent to explode. She was a very strong character.
Q: Have you had any contact with the Piaf estate?
OD: No, they’re almost all dead. During the writing process, I really wanted to write alone without talking to any real people. But at the very end of the writing process, one of her best, most intimate friends, called me and we started talking on the phone. And it was strange – it was the first time I’ve talked to someone who was really involved in her life. I said, ‘OK, I will send you the script tomorrow.’ And I was very anxious about the reaction. I knew that the facts were true, because there are a lot of biographies to read, so I knew I was right with the situation. But I really wanted to make a portrait, and you can’t be sure if the portrait is right or wrong. So this person called me just after they read it, and she told me it was exactly Piaf, the portrait is right.
Q: Did you always intend to finish on her most famous song?
OD: In the script, I finished with this but it was not exactly the same. I had written she starts to sing, the song begins, she sings one line and then cut. But I just let Marion do it all. When I saw her on the stage, at the Olympia, doing the playback, it was so strong I said to myself, ‘Let’s roll. Keep everything.’ I don’t know what is better but I choose to let the song play.
Q: Marion, you have often played strong women. Are you drawn to them?
MC: Yes. I love the way those women fight for love, for life.
Q: You come from a family of artists. Are there any parallels with you and Edith?
MC: It’s true I do come from a family of artists but it was so different. It was completely different what my life was like when I was young and Edith’s life when she was young.
Q: Your parents were actors on stage. It seems you’ve gone in the other direction to them?
MC: Yes, because my parents never did movies.
Q: Did they encourage you to act?
MC: Yes, because my parents encourage their children to be happy and where they need to be. It’s all their fault! But the passion is contagious. My father did some plays for children and my mother, I went to see her later, as Shakespeare when you’re four is not that fun.
Q: When did you start acting?
MC: I started quite young – but not at school. In a drama class. My parents saw that it was there that I could express myself.
Q: How have your Hollywood experiences been?
MC: Each time it’s different, but to have the opportunity to be directed and hear ‘action’ from your idol, that was something. I remember the first day on the Tim Burton movie, I had that nervous laugh because I couldn’t believe that I was on that set. It was the first shooting day and Burton was more than excited. He was like a child and so happy to start. He was jumping like a squirrel! And I was there and it was my first day too – wow! And then the first ‘action’, I felt this nervous laugh – a laugh full of so many things. My happiness to be there, my happiness to have a dream I didn’t dare to have come true…it was amazing! But it’s always different: a different story, a different director…
Q: But with something like A Good Year, you shot in France, so did that help?
MC: I don’t know if I need that kind of help but I couldn’t compare the Tim Burton experience to that Ridley Scott experience. When I shot for him, I was older and more at ease. But it’s definitely a very big difference to shoot in Provence and to shoot in Montgomery, Alabama, for sure.
Q: Is it important for you to make low-budget films now – like Innocence?
MC: For me, all that matters is the story. If I’m touched by the story and feel that I need to tell it…if there’s money or no money, it’s not important. I really don’t care about the money or huge or little movies. I don’t think in those terms. So, yes, definitely, if someone like Lucile Hadzihalilovic comes and asks me to do an experimental or totally different kind of movie, and I feel I have my place there, I will do it.
Q: So what have you done since La Vie En Rose?
MC: Nothing! I’ve wanted to find again the desire to tell stories! But I’m now ready!
