An excellent performance but that's all that really hooked me about this film

Rating: 7/10 (17 May 2008)

This film is a biography of the late French singer and actress Edith Piaf. While not known very well in the US, she was a huge star in France and throughout Europe in the 1940s and 50s. The film explores much of her life, though oddly, it seems to miss a few details which might have been interesting--such as the entire second world war and what Miss Piaf did during a 10 year stretch from about 1938-1948.
The leading lady in this film, Marion Cotillard, did an amazing job and deservedly won an Oscar for her performance as Edith Piaf. Oddly, however, is that although this was a very good performance, the film itself wasn't particularly involving. It's a testament to Ms. Cotillard's performance that she won the Best Actress award given that she was in a film that was only slightly above average as I have probably seen hundreds of better French films. Now I am sure that there are many Edith Piaf fans out there that may be enraged by my saying this, but the film lacks one very important quality I like to see in any bio-pic--and that is likability. From what I could see, although the film helped us to understand why Ms. Piaf became who she was, it didn't encourage me to care one bit about the rather obnoxious and unlikable lady. Sure, she was a French institution and lovely singer, but the film makes her seem like a shallow and self-indulgent fool--treating those around her horribly, having an affair with a married man and using alcohol and drugs with reckless abandon. Because of these problems and the great length of the film, I found myself wanting for the character to just die so I could stop watching the movie. I would probably feel much the same way about a film about Billie Holiday or Judy Garland--two great American singers who led similarly self-destructive lives.