I finally got around to watching La Mome, and I have to say it was quite unbelievable. Marion Cotillard completely deserved her Oscar, more so than most of its recipients of recent years. Personally, most actors are good but only because they possess enough talent. Cotillard on the other hand, she was Edith Piaf. Intense, sickly, raw. Superbly carried through. Even the details, the way edith stiffs up her limbs and the constant surprised look she has, like a child.

Edith led an amazing, magical, dramatic life. Full of unexpected events, a life only thought of in books. Born to a tortured cafe singer and a street acrobat, she spent some of her childhood with her grandmother who owns a brothel and her only companion, a loving prostitute. After, she travelled France with her father, working in a circus. For a while, she was blind from keratitis but eventually had a miraculous healing. She was then found and her career took off. The love of her life, a world-class boxer, had died in a plane crash on the way from New York to Paris to see her, and thereafter she became addicted to drugs. She died from liver cancer at age 47. What I love about Piaf was how intense she was, how naive she allowed herself to be, and how her voice was all that mattered-nothing else.