An Icon Re-Presented

La Vie En Rose is a beautiful visual rendition on the life of Edith Piaf. Part of the Shanghai International Film Fest, it's not the first film that's been made about the life of this iconic French singer, nor, I presume, will it be the last. So it came as a surprise when I came across a fiery critique made by Judith Thurman, in which she contends that the film's script "resorts at nearly every turn to a visual cliche: the childhood of picturesque squalor the picaresque adolescence,; the montage of rave reviews rolling off an old-fashioned printing press that gives way to the scene of a trashed hotel suite."

Please.

Perhaps I don't possess the artistic sensibility to discern between cliche methods of film-making vs. cutting edge film-making. However, I recently saw half a film that was shot entirely with split screen, an affect in which the scene is viewed from two different angles that are slightly askew from the other. Uh, two words: head ache. It seems to me that Thurman is daunted by one fact at large about these "cliche" devices the directors used: they effin work! Director Olivier Dahan has produced a refreshing interpretation of a subject matter that's been told a million times over. But this is just an opinion: see for yourself, visual cliches and all!