Piaf

She was born in a gutter (literally) and raised in a brothel, went blind in infancy and 'miraculously' recovered her sight, lost her own child to tuberculosis, and ultimately triumphed on the music hall stage: Edith Piaf's early life, as potential biopic material, is simply too crude to be true. Yet, if rendered as a popular song by a director like Demy, it could have been extraordinarily poignant. By infallibly homing in on every available cliché, and dubbing the lugubrious Ariel with the voice of an imitator rather than Piaf's own, Casaril has made a movie worthy of inclusion in the catalogue of indignities which befell its subject during her lifetime.