vip in the city

No regrets

In film class tonight, La Vie En Rose, a biopic of the iconic French singer Édith Piaf, referred to by some as the Gallic Judy Garland.

The film follows the singer’s life from her troubled childhood to her death. Colorful stories about the 4′8″ piaf – sparrow – are the stuff of legend, in some cases, perpetrated by the artist herself: born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville in 1915 (in a hospital, not on the street under a gas lamplight, as the story sometimes goes), she spent her early years living among prostitutes in her paternal grandmother’s brothel, during which young Édith may or may not have experienced an extended episode of blindness as a result of contracting conjunctivitis. What is more verifiable is that she was discovered singing on the streets of Paris by impresario Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu in the film) who booked her at the popular Parisian nightspot Gerny’s, where she became an overnight sensation. A recording contract soon followed, launching Piaf into what would become international stardom, after a dark period of infamy during which she was suspected of involvement in Leplée’s 1936 murder. The film, for the most part, glosses over the French chanteuse’s passionate affairs – Jean Cocteau, actor Yves Montand and Marlene Dietrich count among her many lovers – maintaining the romantic focus on her ill-starred relationship with married world boxing champion, “Casablanca Clouter” Marcel Cerdan.

The rest of her sad story follows the familiar “Behind the Music” arc: illness, heartbreak, morphine and alcohol addictions, a stint in rehab, and an early demise in 1963, at the age of 47.

Piaf is played by French actress Marion Cotillard, best known in America for playing Russell Crowe’s romantic interest in 2006’s A Good Year, based on Peter Mayle’s international bestseller of the same title.

Cotillard’s physical transformation is remarkable — she disappears into the challenging role, which spans over three decades of Piaf’s life from a gamine teenager to a stooped, shockingly frail, woman. The film makes liberal use of Piaf’s iconic songs (all expertly lip-synched): the title, of course, is taken from one of her most famous, though the particular performance of it featured in the film is — sacré bleu! — in English. It closes with her signature “Non, je ne regrette rien“ (translated as “No, I regret nothing” or more pithily as “No regrets”), a fitting anthem for the artist’s turbulent life.

I did not hear “Tu Es Partout,” the song featured in the 1941 film Montmartre-sur-Seine, but recognizable to me from the wonderful scene in Saving Private Ryan in which the soldiers enjoy a lull as they prepare to defend Ramelle against German attack. Corporal Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies) provided a translation of the song as it played on a phonograph amidst the blasted out remains of the French village:

Even life itself only represents you
Sometimes I dream that I am in your arms
And you speak softly in my ear
You say things that make my eyes close
And I find that marvelous

Yiddish Policemen and Suburban Girl

I’d scheduled a rather ambitious evening for myself weeks before there were any plans of globe-trotting, and by late this afternoon, I was running on Coke Zero. (Must be the Ace-K that makes it taste so good.)

After work, it was up to the 92nd Street Y, where tonight’s featured reader was another of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon. Chabon, who pronounces his name “Shea as in Stadium, Bon as in Jovi,” is best known as the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — one of the ten best books of the past ten years set in New York City. The comic book set knows him better for his award-winning spin-off graphic novel series and as the screenwriter behind Spider-Man 2; film buffs, as the author of the stories on which 2000’s Wonder Boys and the upcoming The Mysteries of Pittsburgh are based.

All groups were represented in the capacity audience tonight – thanks in part to the rather extensive media promotion of the event, based on Chabon’s ongoing weekly serial in The New York Times and the controversy surrounding his new book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, dropping on bookstores that day.

Chabon easily defused any lingering tensions by opening the evening: “Is there anyone here tonight who’s already mad at me?” Nervous twitters and surreptitious head-swiveling eased into laughter when after a beat, he continued: “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

The author went on to talk about the early inspiration for his latest work and the role his faith plays in his writing. And after reading a short excerpt of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, he submitted to an interview with Salon co-founder Laura Miller, followed by “fawning praise and obvious questions” from the audience… during which there were absolutely no outbreaks of violence.

I wish I could have stayed on for the entire evening — or stuck around to get my Kavalier & Clay  signed — but I was off into the suddenly wet night to meet M downtown for the Tribeca Film Festival’s late-night screening of Suburban Girl. The film, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin as the romantic leads (ew ), is based on two stories from Melissa Bank’s 1999 chick-lit bestseller, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Marc Klein, best known for his screenplay to 2001’s Serendipity, wrote and directed what was overall a not-so-entertaining, rather confusing mess of a film. Based on the enormous popularity Bank’s debut book, I can only assume that the source material was ill-served.

Sadly, the heartiest audience laughs seemed to have been at the expense of absent Baldwin, whose Mr. Big-esque character was asked to deliver some unfortunately-timed lines about a “vindictive ex-wife” and — worse, still — to leave a phone message for his estranged daughter. (I have to admit, I snickered there, too.)

On the way home, the 24-hour Starbucks in my neighborhood. 1 in the morning on a Wednesday and not a free table in sight.

Not destined to make a sound

At the Gen Art Film Festival for a screening of When a Man Falls in the Forest. I don’t know that this film was ever released in theaters. Not surprising, given the rather trite material, but it seems a pity that more people won’t get the chance to see the brilliant (and brutal) scene where Timothy Hutton’s character leaves a rambling, pleading confessional voicemail message for his estranged wife (Sharon Stone). It’s all done in a single lingering close-up take — and though it feels too real to have been entirely scripted, we learned this night that it was. Every word.