A great popular melodrama.

Rating: 8/10 (22 February 2007)

The film was evidently conceived and planned as a great popular melodrama and the film is just it. Even sometimes on the limit of bad taste. For example this long episode with Piaf persuading and persuading Marcel Cerdan to fly immediately to America to meet her, that you begin to feel that it becomes an excellent framework for a great melodramatic tragic episode and of course it turns out exactly this way. The commentators insist that constant flashbacks in the film produce a rather confusing effect on the spectator. And it is true. One of IMDS's commentators exclaims: " Why this anarchic presentation? Ask the Director, only he knows the answer." May be I guess why. The Director wanted to produce the maximal emotional effect on the spectator but he was not sure enough of himself. He was afraid that if he narrates the Piaf's biography simply in chronological manner he risks annoying the spectator. For example, an important part of the film is devoted to the decrepitude of singer in her last years. If it were narrated just chronologically it may produce a rather depressing effect on the spectator. But a flashback to her flamboyant youth at this moment produces just that emotional shock that the Director has intended to create. And it works! And of course the performance of Marion Cotillard as Piaf is absolutely astounding.