Film

Cotillard's throaty, Oscar-baiting imitation of Piaf is the film's chief virtue, allowing the actress to alternate between two modes—impetuous gamine and frazzled junkie. But after dispensing with Piaf's early years (singing lessons in a brothel, bout with blindness, teenage circus job), the movie falls into an interminable cycle of public performances and backstage crankiness, punctuated by three or four accidental deaths.

The jumbled chronology does no one any favors. Piaf's daughter dies from meningitis before it's established that Piaf had a daughter. World War II is forgotten entirely. The makeup artists have a field day with Piaf's uglification-by-morphine, though apparently no one bothered to give them the shooting schedule, which leads to a curious phenomenon whereby Cotillard appears to age backwards through the late '40s. The film includes a cameo by someone who neither looks nor sounds like Marlene Dietrich, but neglects to provide screen time to Piaf's most famous lover, Yves Montand. Rose is idol worship for people who already belong to the cult. All others will only learn that Piaf could carry a tune.