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Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Blistering performances.

This is a biopic of Édith Piaf (Marion Cotillard) told in a non-linear manner. The movie starts with her collapsing during a 1959 New York performance. She is a young girl crying in the streets of 1918 Paris. Her father is away at war and her singing mother abandons her. He returns home to take the sick Édith away to his mother who runs a brothel in Normandy. She is befriended by maternal hooker Titine. His father returns again to take her away to work in the circus. They quit the circus and she starts singing in the streets. Nightclub owner Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu) hires her giving her the name Piaf until his murder. This is a low point as the public turns against her and she is forced into a convent by her mother. Next, she is in post-war New York falling for boxer Marcel Cerdan. It is a troubled exuberant life of ups and downs.Marion Cotillard is incredibly powerful acting this wild life. She delivers on every point. It's a masterful performance. The movie itself is a long-running biopic. The story isn't able to distill into a simple idea. It's a lot of sections and vignettes. The most controversial and powerful should be her years in occupied Europe working under Nazi rule. Oddly, the movie seems to skip over that important part of her life. Maybe, there are uncomfortable rumors that the movie refuses to touch. Overall, Cotillard is so powerful that any problems fade into the background.

The movie presents the story as if it's the most bleak story about a real life singer. For a two hour long movie, this flick presents you with a fast paced story, with most of the scenes lasted only below the three minute mark. The coloration choice sure helps a lot in setting the tone to a dark and bleak story, as if it's saying that's how Edith felt about her own life. The non-chronological story flow ordering just made it even darker as it forces the audience to rethink of past scenes and make connections on their own. Yet I find this kind of ordering, met with good editing, proved to be great factor in setting in the story build-up for the ending. The acting overall is just a great work by Marion Cotillard. She went very much total in her role here, that kind of made her other roles pales in comparison.

What's the point of treating others with respect, no less yourself. Much like Robert DiNro in Raging Bull, Marion Cotillard recreates a character that will long remain in the souls of cinefiles and the public alike. The sad symbiotic tales of the characters flowing through the stream of Edith Piafs' life are captured as willing participants in the songstress' drunken existence. Still France adopted her as their soul and this experience is none the less remarkable and seeing the singer come to life by Cotillard makes this more than a one time viewing biopic. You can judge and sympathize at the same time but note only part of history is revealed in this long and choppy binge into the life of Edith Piaf.

Existence. As puzzle. Dark pieces. Gray childhood. Music as Jacob ladder. Pendulum from dizzy heights to abysses. A honest story about success and its harsh price. Lights, public and horrible night. Death as circle and love as pray. Result - a movie, special movie behind cages or traps. Sketch of a brilliant woman and her wars. Nothing forced. Nothing artificial, pink or fake. And the merit is, in great measure, work of Marion Cotillard. Which is in perfect place, with precise art of balance of feelings, gestures and expression. A impressive Piaf. Bricks for role - the truth in pure form. The film may be extraordinary, spectacular, sad, original or masterpiece. But important is only the crumb after its end. Not presentation of a life, not homage of a great artist. Only clay of a house. And the traces of a silhouette. Natural, young Cotillard is Piaf.