A great biopic with direction inspired by Citizen Kane and French tradition

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2007)

My evaluation is that it ranks with the best biopics of all time, in the same class as "Gandhi" or "Lawrence of Arabia". At the same time its emotional wallop is incredibly greater than those two.
In many of the reviews above, the director is criticized for the complexity of the time frames. In several, the director is criticized for the unreal look of the New York scenes. I wish to comment on these two characteristics as follows:
(1) The time sequence is obviously (to me) inspired by CITIZEN KANE, which, like this film, jumps around from childhood to adulthood to old age and back again. My interpretation is that the film sequence represents the reminiscences of a person conscious of impending death, reviewing what that person on a deathbed considers the significant memories of that person's life. I can't recall a shot in the film that is not in principle a memory of Edith Piaf herself. Whatever is left out (like the wartime years) are left out, in my opinion, because Edith herself did not think them a significant period of her life. Moments of her own career triumph are also left out, because at the end moments of her life, it was love that was crucial and not success.
Beyond this interpretation, my knowledge of classic French films tells me that French directors have in many fascinating movies explored the stream of consciousness of memory, in a way that is quite a bit more complex than the typical American or English directors. I see in this movie influences from "A Man and a Woman", and even "Last Year at Marienbad". The shot in which Edith is singing in front of an audience and there is no sound is reminiscent of sequences in both of these films.
(2) On the matter of the artificial, unreal look of the New York scenes, my interpretation is that it is a conscious effect, as a contrast between the "real" world (=France) and the "artificial" world (=America and Hollywood). Again, the criticism of this look in this film seems misplaced. After all, CITIZEN KANE has many many scenes with cardboard looking sets.
Finally, the last great scene of the singing of "Je regrette rien" seems to me to be the last memory of Edith as she slips into her final coma, the justification of everything that has gone before and the summary of her life.