At first glance Olivier Dahan doesn't come off as a filmmaker who would choose to make a biopic about Edith Piaf. He carved out a successful career in music videos, and is an avid aficionado of French hip-hop. Piaf's music and what he listens to don't quite gel. But perhaps this explains the particular allure of "La vie en rose."

He remains clear-eyed and unobsessed. "I see her less as France's national icon than a woman who made no distinction between her life and her art," explains Dahan. "To me, that says everything there is to say about art. There should be no boundaries or separations. An artist's life should be about his or her art, and nothing less. That's difficult to do, but that was how Edith lived her life. . . . I admired that very much."

Having said so, he admits that this is not a straightforward biopic, densely researched and unwavering from the facts, but a "stream of consciousness that belongs partly to Edith as I see her, partly to me."