CD Reviews

Jill Aigrot

Words of Love | LML Music

By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 4, 2008

2.5 Stars

Is Jil Aigrot, as the publicity buzz would have it, “the voice of Piaf in La vie en rose [original title La môme],” the Olivier Dahan–directed Edith Piaf bio-pic whose star, Marion Cotillard, just won the Best Actress Oscar? Yes and no. The better-known songs you hear in La môme — notably “Non je ne regrette rien” — are taken from Piaf recordings. Where there was not a usable recording of a Piaf song — notably early on, when she’s singing on the street and auditioning for Louis Leplée — Aigrot fills in. This is not a La môme soundtrack, but it is an album of Piaf songs (including “Les flonflons du bal,” “La goulante du pauvre Jean,” and “Non je ne regrette rien” but not “Padam” or “Milord” or “Sous le ciel de Paris” or “La vie en rose”), backed by accordion and piano and sung in a voice much like Piaf’s but sweeter and less guttural, with less of the gutter. Enjoyable, but it’s not as if the real thing weren’t available. There’s no CD booklet, and in her acknowledgments, Aigrot thanks Olivier Gahan. Tant pis.

Related: The unnamable, Review: Coco Before Chanel, Review: The Runaways, More

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Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Stupid? Sure, but laced with a strange sense of logic.
Review: Che
An ambitious, whole-hog, four-hour-plus bio-pic of Che Guevara, c'mon.
Amazing Grace
Michael Apted’s stirring if conventional bio-pic of 18th-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce offers rum, funneled into anti-slavery PM William Pitt the Younger, and sugar, in the form of the hero’s adoring wife, Barbara.
Review: Bronson
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That staple of the musical bio-pic — a close-up of dope bubbling on a spoon — punctuates Rodger Grossman’s account of the short life of Darby Crash.
Hope against Hollywood
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Wasted again
Who was Edie Sedgwick? Was she a muse who inspired some notable work by Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan or just a footnote in their careers? Did she have any talent or accomplishments of her own? Why, in short, does she deserve a bio-pic? Watch the trailer for Factory Girl (QuickTime)
Breakfast With Scot
Laurie Lind’s fuses Three Men and a Baby, La Vie en Rose , and every other gay rom-com ever made.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Edith Piaf, More

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