The film opens with a Piaf performance in 1959 New York, when the chanteuse was as celebrated a singer as she would ever be. She was in her early forties and would be dead in four years. Born in 1915, Piaf grew up with her grandmother in a brothel in Normandy, travelled with a circus of which her father was part and then started earning money singing on the streets of Paris with her best friend Mômone (Sylvie Testud). There she was discovered by cabaret owner Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu) who in turn put her in contact with the people who would make her a star.

Dahan, who wrote script with Isabelle Sobelman, presents all these facts as well as many from the life of the famous Piaf (or "Little Sparrow") everyone knows, but does so in a jumbled manner that necessitates title cards to indicate time and place for almost every scene. The dramatic momentum is hampered by this approach and during La môme’s opening half hour the film feels strangely distant (including in some scenes that should be downright chilling: her separation from her mother, Leplée’s untimely death), before the force of Cotillard’s performance becomes visible and sweeps any misgivings about the screenplay and editing aside.

Cotillard, probably best known to international audiences for her role as the prostitute in Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) is never less than convincing as she ages from Piaf’s teens to her death at 47, when illness and addiction had turned her into someone who looked over 70 and could barely walk and speak, let alone sing. It is also very much because of Cotillard’s nuanced performance that the audience remains interested in Piaf, whose diva behaviour and moments of outright tyranny make her a very unlikeable protagonist indeed.

Piaf's strength and her fragility as a woman are clearest in the tragic love affair she had with the married boxing champion Marcel Cedan (singer Jean-Pierre Martins), who died in a plane crash in 1949. Dahan and Cotillard here establish the clear duality of Piaf’s character, though Dahan also indulges in portraying the World Championship Boxing in much more time and detail than needed, distracting the audience from the main story, something which plagues the film at several intervals, though other aspects of her life (her recording and acting career, her friendship with Dietrich, Aznavour and Cocteau) are neglected or not mentioned at all.

Piaf’s music remains wonderful even decades after her death, and the film uses plenty of it even during the childhood scenes. Cinematography by Tetsuo Nagata (Blueberry) is wonderful -- especially in the way it uses close-ups to reveal character -- and production design is equally solid. The film’s last scene and the choice of the song played over Piaf’s last moments should come as no surprise, though the fact that it still packs a sizeable emotional wallop means that Dahan and Cotillard must have done something right.