Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by dave c (A) on July 11, 2007 at 13:55:21

This was written about here a while back but didn't get much RE-action.
Well Is aw it last night and I will stick my neck and call it the best thing I have seen in a long time and at its heart is perhaps the best acting performance I have ever seen.
An impressionistic telling of the life of Edith Piaf, the film goes backwards and forwards and some critics have said it is hard to follow where and when you are; well you are just going to have to concentrate, because if you do you will see a film of such majestic power that it can pull tears out of you.
From the mud filled streets of France at the end of the first world war to the heights of New York celebrity living the film follows this most intriguing and contrary of women.
Marion Cotillard gives what could be the greatest acting performance of the decade... of ever, in my opinion.
It's not the make up although that helps as she becomes the prematurely old, addicted, lovelorn star.
The acting goes so far beyond that I cannot explain or even describe it.
People were audibly gasping during the film and you could hear people crying at times.
At the end of Piaf's life, not even 50 but looking 80, Cotillard seems to shrink within herself, moving like a sick bird and coming to life only when she sings.
It is a devastating performance that frankly blows anything else you have seen this year right out of the water.
How often to ordinary, not festival audiences start to clap at the end of a film?
I don't want to give anything away at all, but there is a scene where she awaits her lover arriving in New York and the climax of this section could choke the breath in your throat.
Not everything is explained in the film and some areas of Piaf's life are skipped over, but that does nothing to subtract anything from this extraordinary film.
See it. See it as soon as you can.
It is simply shattering.