clipped from www.calendarlive.com

Young French actress Marion Cotillard ("A Very Long Engagement," "A Good Year") is astonishing as the troubled singer, whom she portrays from her late teens to her death at a ravaged 47, in a technically virtuosic and emotionally resonant performance that elevates the material from a somewhat episodic melodrama into something strange and riveting. Disappearing completely into the role, she travels between emotional extremes that today would come each with its own psychiatric treatment and corresponding pill. Alternately raging, showboating, withdrawing and falling apart, Cotillard's Piaf has nary a dull psychological moment.