Although this movie came out in France in February, it only made it to wide release in the United States and Canada this month. Earlier this year it debuted at a film festival and was reviewed favorably by Stephen Holden in The New York Times, who said it was "held together by the intensity of Cotillard's performance." I'll excerpt here from that review, because I agree with every sentiment expressed. Cotillard's tortured adult Edith is so moving and her lip-synching so convincing that I forgot several times that she was not actually Piaf herself. Her accent is at times almost indecipherable (I expect native French speakers do better than I) but telegraphs the poverty, lack of education and general deprivation of her early and formative years. Later that same accent overflows with caustic wit and sadness. Cotillard will surely be an Oscar contender.

Marion Cotillard’s feral portrait of the French singer Édith Piaf as a captive wild animal hurling herself at the bars of her cage is the most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another I’ve ever encountered in a film. Her portrayal of Piaf, plucked from the streets of Paris and molded into a music hall legend, ignites Olivier Dahan’s screen biography Ms. Cotillard’s Piaf ages shockingly, from a famished alley cat ravenously slurping up life to a stooped, feeble wreck whose dyed red hair is falling out. It is an entirely convincing portrait of instinctive genius and raw life force wedded to self-destruction.