Quelle Merde!

Piaf learning to be abused.

Last night I watched "La Vie en Rose," the biopic of Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard plays the ill-fated Piaf and her performance won her an Academy Award for Best Actress this year.

Unquestionably, Mademoiselle Cotillard gave a great performance, but the movie was one of the worst examples of cinematic messes I have ever seen.

The movie, which runs 140 minutes, is almost as long as Piaf's life. Or it seems that way. If I was told I would be tortured if I would not watch "La Vie en Rose" again, I would choose waterboarding.

If you don't know anything about the French chanteuse, you will not learn anything from this film. It is as muddled a mass as any swamp.

The flashbacks are so random as to induce an acid flashback, even if you have never dropped LSD. One minute Edith is ten, the next minute she's at death's door.

There are references made to her husbands and her child who died at the age of two, but nothing is explained.

I doubt that knowing French and not needing the subtitles would help in any way to unravel this long winded mess.