La vie en rose posterEdith Piaf’s life was full of dra­ma, dra­ma that poured out of her when she sang. Born into pover­ty in WWI-era Paris, raised in a broth­el when both par­ents aban­doned her, dis­cov­ered singing on street cor­ners, she became one of the biggest stars of the 20th Cen­tu­ry and died of liv­er can­cer at the age of only 47. Her life is giv­en the big screen treat­ment in La Vie En Rose, a big bud­get French pro­duc­tion that opened the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val this year. La Vie En Rose is play­ing almost every­where from today: Read­ing Courte­nay Cen­tral, Rial­to, Light­house Petone, Pent­house and Embassy.

Also open­ing today is a Michael (Heat) Mann pro­duced thriller called The King­dom, star­ring Jamie Foxx. A bomb explodes in Sau­di Ara­bia, tar­get­ing Amer­i­cans work­ing there. The US Gov­ern­ment offers the locals an elite team of FBI inves­ti­ga­tors to sup­port the inves­ti­ga­tion and they rapid­ly find them­selves cul­tur­al­ly out of their depth even though they have the skills and tech­nol­o­gy to locate the ter­ror­ists before they strike again. Also star­ring Jen­nifer Gar­ner, Chris Coop­er (Breach) and Jason Bate­man. The King­dom plays at Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners and Sky City Queens­gate.

Final­ly this week, Scar­lett Johans­son stars in The Nan­ny Diaries, adapt­ed from the smash hit nov­el by the peo­ple who brought you the won­der­ful Amer­i­can Splen­dor (Robert Pul­ci­ni and Shari Springer Berman). Star of Amer­i­can Splen­dor, Paul Gia­mat­ti, also fea­tures as one of the poi­so­nous par­ents entrust­ing their off­spring to decent hard­work­ing Scar­lett (the oth­er is Lau­ra Lin­ney). Read­ings Courte­nay Cen­tral and Sky City Queens­gate.

La Vie En Rose has been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes and the oth­er two will show up in due course.