Three of the films on release this week centre on fragile women struggling to cope with both the pressures of their profession and the tawdry celebrity that comes with the territory. Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose is dominated by Marion Cotillard's exquisite performance as Edith Piaf. Sniffily dismissed by some critics for sticking to the hackneyed biopic formula, this is a tour de force that not only recreates the highs and lows of the Little Sparrow's tragically brief career, but also chronicles the history of the chanson in the first half of the last century.

Adopting a flashbacking style, the action looks back from Piaf's last days in 1963, as she battled cancer in Swiss isolation. She was only 47 when she died, yet she seemed to have several lifetimes of pain and misfortune heaped upon her. Abandoned by her parents, she was wrenched away from the brothel by prostitute (Emmanuelle Seigner) who nursed here through temporary blindness. But, then, none of Piaf's relationships lasted long, whether it was Mômone (Sylvie Testud), the street-singing companion who drank herself into churlish ingratitude; Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu), the nightclub proprietor who gave Piaf her big break and then lost his life to her apache consort; or Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), the married boxer lover who lost his life in a plane crash dancing attendance to La Môme's latest whim.

Yet, while the upheavals and heartache fuelled Piaf's self-destructive streak, they were also crucial to her art. Consequently, Dahan studs the story with iconic numbers, which Cotillard invests with affecting passion, even though she is often miming to Piaf's distinctive recordings. Moreover, he ably captures the mood of the era that made the songs so significant, whether it was the optimism of France's Popular Front phase, the hedonism of 1940s America or the renewed confidence of post-war Paris.

The facts are occasionally blurred (Piaf had a tendency to mythologise her past) and the structure is sometimes cumbersome. But this remains a sobering treatise on the price to be paid for genius and Cotillard's shifts from vulgarity to vulnerability leave an indelible impression.

In the early days of photography, it was believed by some that the camera had the power to steal the subject's spirit. Actress-turned-director Fabienne Berthaud revives that idea for Frankie, her highly stylised debut, in which she chronicles the mental disintegration of a German-born model on the cusp of passing her physical peak.

Shrouding episodes in the melancholic melodies of the folk band CocoRosie, Berthaud switches between semi-improvised exposes of the tawdry glamour and intellectual banality of the fashion business and excruciating sanatorium reveries, in which a near-catatonic Diane Kruger battles her demons against the incessant chatter of her fellow inmates (who were actual residents of the Blois insitution used for the shoot).

With Kruger valiantly conveying frazzling ennui, everything smacks of authenticity. But it's never clear what Berthaud is trying to say about either the exploitative nature of catwalk culture or the treatment of the deranged.

Finally, the BFI has reissued John Cassavetes's 1977 drama, Opening Night. Although its story about a career-obsessed actress bears traces of All About Eve and Sweet Bird of Youth, this intense outing could easily be entitled A Woman Under the Influence II. Gena Rowlands landed an Oscar nomination for that 1974 study of an ageing woman crumbling as her life slips away from her and she won the Best Actress prize at Berlin for this courageous display as the star whose role in Joan Blondell's new play reflects her own concerns with losing all she has worked for.

Whether succumbing to drunken self-pity or being tormented by the memory of the death of a young fan, Rowlands sustains an aura of desperation that is excruciating to watch. But the detached sentience of Cassavetes's direction prompts a feeling of hollowness.