"La Vie en rose" didn't have anything to do with "Backbeat." But after watching the latter it seemed to me that it was obligatory to know more about the Little Sparrow of Paris. So since living in Vienna I have discovered many of her songs. I fell in love with a few of her chansons, which I rarely understood (except when I asked my husband about the meaning or searched the translation on the internet) and wondered about the enigmatic voice.
A biopic came out in 2007 with Marion Cotillard playing Edith. The French actress won the Oscar Best Actress the next year. And I understand why she took home the award. She walked the walk and talked the talk. In short, she breathed and behaved like Piaf.
The film opened with the little Edith, dirty and neglected, roaming the dinghy streets of Paris at the tail-end of World War I. Europe these days was like the slums of Asia or Africa today. Poor, unhygienic, miserable. Edith grew up on these streets. Her mother panhandled by singing on the street. Edith's father, a contortionist, was still stranded somewhere between heaven and hell waiting for the war to be finished. On his return he took the young Edith away from his mother-in-law to his mother, who owned a brothel in Normandy. There, prostitutes took care of her. At age 10, she joined her circus player father. The public took a notice of her talent when her father urged her to "do something" and began to sing "La Marseillaise." Like her mother, she earned her keep singing in the streets when she was discovered by club owner Louis Leplee. And her popularity started from there.
She was the rage of the 1930s till 1950s. The film was a series of flashbacks that featured much of Edith's childhood and early adulthood. It was a rough life she sang about and lead nicely orchestrated in strong colours that heavily reminded me of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latter films.
A few hours before she died she told her nurse that she couldn't remember anything and was afraid. Until we recognised that she did recall some of the events in her life like the similarity between her and her mother, her father giving her a Japanese doll, her dead child Marcelle. The last scene was her debut performance at the Paris Olympia where she sang "Je ne regrette rien."
The question remains if the troubled chanteause didn't really regret anything at all. Fame has its price. And Edith paid for it deeply.
Where I live it is impossible to see a smiling face. It is dreadful if you are out in the public. Every morning, inside the trams or trains it is seldom to watch people having a ball. Everyone smirks. Everyone is grumpy. It is difficult not to be influenced. Especially if you are the outsider, the foreigner. Vienna has always been the city that loves to complain. People here complain as if it is their second job. As an Asian, it is strange yet normal to see angry European faces on the street, at the supermarkets, everywhere. As much as possible, I exert an effort to be in a good even though it is really hard. My trick is to remember the days when I am the happiest. I have done it several times and it works somehow.
And there's volunteering.
V o l u n t e e r . . . yes, volunteering.
Of course it is impossible to change the world. It is the other way around. It changes us, making us cruel, soft, loving or hate the world. But we can do some things to make it better. Think of the future and think of yourself. For some it must be stupidity to render your service without pay. They also say in this world of ours, where rich get richer, animosity reigns. Don't listen to them. It is in your hands to make the world a better place.
Me, reading a passage from Muriel Spark's last novel "The Finishing School" concerning jealousy of someone's career, ability or life.
The story revolves around a teacher and his student. As soon as the mentor finds out that his ward is writing a novel, a promising one, envy touches his soul causing him to have writer's block. He is unable to control his emotions, unable to write his own novel.
The student is re-writing the life of the doomed queen of Scotland Mary Stuart, the time when her husband Lord Darnley murdered her private secretary and confidante Rizzo out of jealousy.
An intermezzo of possibilities, absurdities that can happen in real life. The Dame Muriel Spark and her Swan Song.
"What is jealousy? Jealousy is to say, what you have got, it is mine, it is mine? Not quite. It is to say, I hate you because you have got what I have not got and desire. I want to be me, myself, but in your person, with your opportunity, your fascination, your looks, your abilities, your spiritual good."
Somehow, this rings a bell.
This is a story of Holocaust, its victims and its perpetrators. But unlike the usual Holocaust film the atrocities aren't showed in colour. Besides, you have seen, heard and read the history, right? For Stefan Ruzowitzsky, it is important that as a member of the audience you'd rather feel the intensity of the victims', as well as the enemies' despair.
At first, it is easy to detect the bad men from the good ones. But as the story unfolds it just goes to show how "human" the characters are. In the end, they are there to survive and preserve of what is left to their lives
Loosely based on the memoir of Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak, who was part of the Operation Bernhard, he, the typesetters and printers, all concentration camp prisoners, were headed by Salomon Sorowitsch played by the fantastic Austrian actor Karl Markovics acting as graphic artist. The Nazis wanted them to forge Bank of England notes to destabilise the British economy, and then later, the US dollar.
Before the Nazis stroke gold, the war was almost over and the "counterfeiters" got out of the camp alive except one, a teenager from Russia, who was shot by a Nazi officer because of tuberculosis endangering the community.
The "Counterfeiters" from Austria won the Oscar's Best Foreign Language this year.
Instead the dame has acquired a taste where the younger generation wondered her rich experience. But despite her recent achievements, an album and Irina Palm, the males think she still is a what she was in the '60s: raw, easy, a muse and whore in a sense of the word.
"Irina Palm," nominated for the Golden Bear for the best movie in Berlin in 2007, is simple, and witty, and yet tragic at the same time. It features Ms Faithfull a doting grandmother who will do anything for her loved ones. Her grandson, Olly, is suffering from an acute disease that needs prompt treatment and that's where the problem begins. It means he has to be treated outside of Great Britain where specialists are waiting to cure him. Olly's family parents are neither rich nor his grandmother Maggie (Marianne Faithfull) to be able to afford the flight and lodging to Australia. They live in a modest house close to London. Most of all, the relationship between Maggie and her daughter-in-law, Sarah, is strained.
Until Maggie decided to take the matter in her hands. Looking naively at the "Wanted Hostess," a euphemism for whore, in a sex shop on Soho she went in and a new world unfolds in front of her.
She met Miki, the wily owner of the sex shop. It was strange when he held her hands as he explains to her the "job" that she is about to do. He tells her that her hands are soft and precious and will make men longing. Until she finds out the real deal. She finds herself working in a room with a small hole, a glory box where the men insert their penis, after an Asian woman has taught her how to touch the men the right way. Appearance is not extremely important, rather the way she does the handjob on the clients. It is not long till she earns the name and the reputation as Irina Palm, here stage name.
Her son goes wary when one day she shows up handing them over the money to help Olly's treatment abroad. As soon as he finds out the truth, Sarah has changed her mind and appreciated the sacrifice Maggie has made. Believe me, you wouldn't have any objections on the conclusion.
This might be an allegory of the life of the former muse of Rolling Stone. The difference between Marianne Faithfull and Maggie is that the former has lived a life of spotlights and bad press. Maggie is a simple widower who doesn't have any inkling of the outside world yet has experienced that not everyone is nice and proper including her dead husband, who had an affair with her best friend. It is a crazy world out there and Marianne has seen it all. And to all the men who still think she is a whore haven't fully grown up yet.
Rating: 10 stars
What artist/band are you listening to the most right now? How did you discover him/her/them?
The The's 1992 album called "Dusk"It was summer and the Philippine energy kept on turning off the electricity in the Philippines. I listened to the album from my walkman. I first heard "Dusk" when a radio station featured it on a Friday evening describing the songs as overly dramatic. I heard the songs and I didn't agree. The next day I found myself in the music shop, a part of my weekly allowance was already spent because of the cassette tape.
I knew The The as a new wave band and somewhat a one-hit wonder in the Philippines. I loved "This Is the Day" and was always requesting it on my favourite radio station, NU 107. Thing is I never knew Mark Johnson as someone who would question life, love, happiness and the world.
Maybe I associated The The as part of the mobile parties in the '80s complete with mirror balls and blinding neon lights.
But "Dusk" was different and it affected me so much. I cried the first time I listened to the entire album. It was not New Wave. It was disturbing. His voice. The melody. It was naked glory. it was also simple. But it was also extraordinary.
I was a bit disappointed when I read both the mainstream American and alternative magazines dissed the album as histrionics.
In my heart, I knew that they were wrong.
Listening to it now the effect on me might be more different. I can say I have a better view of the world. I am married, I have a child, I moved place, I met other people and lost contact with the others I know.
Still, the album's message rings true and I find myself agreeing more to Mark Johnson than before.
Thanks to the Viennese Library. I found it again. On CD.
