I was happy to see recently that Marion Cotillard took out the Oscar Award for her performance in the stunning film La Môme.

Homage to the turbulent life and times of iconic French chanteuse, Édith Piaf, the film is as visually spectacular as the content is fascinating.

Cotillard’s deservedly recognised performance tops it all off. I only saw the film recently, and for days after her vibrancy as the young Piaf and her convincingly cantankerous aged Piaf are all performances of which the memory remains clear in my mind – and the accent on the tip of my tongue, just waiting until I speak enough French to be able to pull off Piaf’s distinctive parigote accent myself… eh, eh… then my linguistic repertoire will surely be complete!

The film is as much a tribute and recognition of a place and era as much as lauding the remarkable figure of Piaf. It portrays a sensitive and essentially romantic vision of the artistic sentiments of Old Paris, as well as the drink, the poverty and the squalor. You get the feeling of possibility and chance even while looking down what can be nothing more than a grimy dead-end street.

Piaf’s life story encapsulates this – but the fairytale of her life still concludes at the same standstill of alcohol and destructive love affairs. Born in the heart of working class Belleville, under a street lantern or so the story is reported to run, she epitomised the rags to riches story of a street urchin making it in the big city. She painted pictures of the mythology of Old Paris – capturing visions of whores and accordion players on cobbled streets, stories from the people’s Paris. This is also what the film attempts, and it’s a rich celebration of life in spite of poverty. However there’s no life without death, and the film’s depictions of death are of charting slow and determined demises.

All in all… recommended entirely. Yeah, yeah, Cotillard was suitably gushing in her acceptance speech… but it goes with the Academy Award territory really (I’m sure “possibility for post-ridicule” is part of the Academy’s judging criteria…)