It's the rags-to-riches story of the little girl with the big voice. With a cafe singer for a mother and an acrobat for a father, there was no doubt that Édith Piaf was meant to be an entertainer. And from the looks of it, although Édith would ultimately become France's greatest popular singer, she lived the life of a rock star.

Born Édith Giovanna Gassion on December 15th, 1915 in one of the poorest parts of Paris, she would experience disease, extreme poverty, and parental abandonment very early on. Almost entirely raised by prostitutes, Piaf went blind due to a case of keratitis until a supposed saint-honoring pilgrimage miraculously cured her. She began singing whilst accompanying her father in his street acrobat act when she was 14. Despite the emotional drainage caused by myriad lovers, mobsters, and the death of her first and only child, Piaf sang on the streets of Paris until she was discovered by a popular nightclub owner when she was 20.

Co-starring in Jean Cocteau's successful play Le Bel Indifférent in 1940 was one of many opportunities Piaf had to meet and become friends with the famous and elite. Demand for her peaked during World War II and after the war, and her making appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and performing at Carnegie Hall made her an international star. Like a French Judy Garland, Piaf was known for her emotional rawness. She was known to deliver such poignant passion that it seemed like every time she sang a song, she died a little. Piaf breathed overwhelming intensity into her songs, literally defining what are now called "torch songs," ballads that celebrate triumph of heart and soul. Battling alcohol and morphine addictions led to her dependency on others and unpredictable behavior. She was only 47 when she died of liver cancer in 1963.

Full of physical and emotional strife, Piaf's life seemed to have all the proper ingredients for an equally emotional but beautiful film, right? Not so fast. Music biopics are risky because there's a very fine line between Walk the Line and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Non-fiction film is never easy because it almost never lives up to the facts and often lays on the mythology too thickly. Musical miming just doesn't cut it. There's no way actors can deliver the charisma of the original artists and last year's Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose is no exception. Director Olivier Dahan was probably inspired by the roller-coaster dramatics of Piaf mythology and thought that such would translate seamlessly into charismatic cinema. Too bad the roller-coaster antics translate into just that, a choppy cinematic trip of whiplash.

Although Marion Cotillard provides an admirable transformation as Piaf (it won her an Oscar), the back and forth jolts across decades look like nothing but a self-satisfying piece full of flickering flashbacks and inaccessible emotional outbursts. Viewers are catapulted into Piaf's dirty laundry without any answers, without a chance to emotionally connect to her. What Piaf lacked in showmanship, she made up for with fantastic vocal articulation-the fact is, the girl was never comfortable with herself. This wishy-washy presence portrayed by Cotillard only amplifies the superficiality of the actress' lip-syncing. Overall, the film is a mess of fractured, swiss-cheese memories that feel closer to a shallow slide show than an actual cinematic biography.

I'm into French culture just as much as the next escapist American wannabee, but La Vie En Rose is utterly nauseating. Whilst in desperate attempt to culturally enlighten myself, I've been known to dabble in vintage yé-yé girl music and the like from time to time, and Piaf's records were inevitable part of my to-listen list. After experiencing the cinematic disaster that is La Vie En Rose, I simply can't listen to Piaf anymore! Don't let this happen to you! For the safety of one's artistic soul, let this serve as a lesson to all: listen to Piaf's music or watch La Vie En Rose, one or the other, don't do both!