Marion Cotillard is a TRIUMPH

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2007)

My God! I just saw the film an hour ago and I am just floored! What a beautifully realized biopic on the life of the greatest French singer of all time, Edith Piaf. The first time I had ever heard of her was when I was seventeen watching "Saving Private Ryan" and being drawn to this voice. In "La Mome" the film takes us back and forth between Edith Piaf's final days and her past: as a child she was abandoned by her drunk mother, her father later takes her only to be dumped in a brothel when she was five. It was in the brothel where she was raised by the prostitutes and paternal grandmother and she was exposed to song. She overcame illness that left her blind briefly as a child. Her father comes to claim her once again and drags her around the country as a circus performer and one day he pushes the little girl to sing and she captivates an audience. By the 1930s Edith Piaf sings for her supper on the streets, in nightclubs, and cabarets until she debuts in a music hall and she is a hit. Marion Cotillard is the winner! For those who do not remember she was the beautiful woman who played Russell Crowe's love interest in last year's lackluster "A Good Year" but she is triumphant here in the role of a lifetime as Edith Piaf. She captures Edith's energy, faith, passion, and sorrow. I couldn't even recognize her. She is definitely up for an Oscar nomination for Best Actress! For years Edith was an alcoholic and a drug addict. She died young at the age of 47 from liver cancer. Her life paralled Billie Holiday and yet she survived Billie by three years. An amazing, powerful, and beautiful biopic of France's greatest voice of the century.