No regrets about Piaf performance

"Marion who?" The money men wanted Audrey Tautou to play Edith Piaf. But French director Oliver Dahan stuck to his guns - and refused to make La Vie en Rose if he couldn't cast unknown actress Marion Cotillard.

And what a performance it is. Cotillard, who snatched Oscar victory from Julie Christie yesterday, gives us the French sparrow in all her grubbiness.

Forget Keira poncing around in ball gowns or Sienna playing party girl Edie Sedgwick, this is the story of a woman who actually put working-class culture on the map.

Dahan doesn't spare us the details of Piaf 's life - brought up in a brothel, she went blind for several years; later she was discovered singing on the streets of Paris.

A brilliant tyrant who drove her supporters to despair, she became addicted to drink and morphine and died at 47. But she refused to be defeated by her damaged childhood.

Shot as a jumbled, impressionist canvas, the film will charm and infuriate in equal measure (lovers come and go, we only learn in the final frame she had a child who died, and what about her singing for the Nazis?).

But I defy anyone not to melt as Cotillard, 32, transforms from street urchin to radical artist to invalid.

Frustratingly few people saw La Vie en Rose when it opened last June. But it has been re-released to coincide with awards season.

And there are many reasons to cheer. This is the first time a Best Actor Oscar has been given for a French language performance.

Finally, it is a truly international award (no Oscars went to American acting talent this year). And the night belonged to Cotillard. Even her hair won an Oscar (which went to British make-up artist Jan Archibald).