3 reviews

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Russell George August 16, 2009

I left Coco Before Chanel wondering why someone thought the story of Gabrielle Chanel’s life prior to her fame as a fashion designer worthy of being filmed. This is a dull and lifeless film. A figure whose influence on women’s fashion and self image led her to being voted among the top 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time Magazine, Coco Chanel is essentially done a disservice by this film. So little happens that you wonder why a more ambitious project could not have incorporated Chanel’s early years as a 20 minute segment in a film covering her whole life.

Chanel’s story could have impact. Sent to an orphanage so that her father could work, she grew with both a resentment and an attraction to privilege, and this clearly informed her sense of aesthetics. But we never see her put her plans into practice because the film ends! Instead, the young Chanel has two unsatisfactory affairs, learns to ride, and starts making the odd hat here and there. It’s soporific in parts - there’s absolutely no dramatic tension.

In fact, it’s saved from being truly awful by two things: 1) it looks great – the cinematography is suitably chic and luxuriant, and 2) it has subtitles. Having to read the dialogue kept me alert throughout, plus I love listening to French. If it had been in English, I think I would have fallen asleep.

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Rowena Purrett July 30, 2009

When considering a trip to the cinema to see Coco Before Chanel it is important to bear in mind the “before” part of the title. The film is a biopic of Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel’s life prior to her time as a top Parisian designer and instead focuses on her journey from a catholic orphanage and the tribulations she faces after this humble beginning up until her designs debut on the catwalk which features as the film’s closing scene.

Directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Audrey Tatou (of Amelie fame) Coco Before Chanel presents a sensitive and sometimes moving portrayal of a determined woman’s struggle to succeed in what was then very much a “man’s world”. Tatou herself spends the majority of the film in rather masculine attire, except in a couple of scenes where she lets down her hair and dons a pair of pyjamas which left this reviewer feeling she looked slightly more Yoko than Coco!

Chanel's journey takes her from an entertainer in a low class Caberet to the “mistress” of a wealthy aristocrat, and Fontaine offers an interesting look at the lives of different classes in turn of the century France. However, despite being an aesthetically beautiful film, the pace is rather slow-moving, making the somewhat sudden ending feel slightly less than satisfying. It could perhaps also be said that the film jumped quite drastically through time in parts leaving the audience bemused as to certain progressions in Chanel’s life.

Overall, Coco Before Chanel is a pleasing film to watch, the cinematography proving to be stunning throughout and the accompanying soundtrack fitting the feel of the film perfectly. Unsurprisingly, the costumes used were also notably impressive, especially the over-the-top dresses that lead to Chanel’s first dalliance with designing - quite breathtaking.

Style obviously defines this movie. The cinematography is faultless; languid and beautiful, with each chapter in the story of Chanel’s early years lingered over. The leisured manner does, however, threaten to render it a mite dull, and it’s only once we are introduced to the aristocrat Etienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), whose mistress Coco becomes, that things start to become more interesting.

Whilst staying with Balsan, she meets the love of her life, English industrialist Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel (Alessandro Nivola) and an unlikely love triangle develops which forms the core of the film. What the movie's slow pace does allow us to see though, are the beginnings of Coco's obsession with fashion: from the sharp, clean lines of the habits worn by the sisters in the orphanage to the austerity of her dark, bland clothes as a bar room singer. A simplicity characterises her early wardrobe which came to define her later designs, and it’s fun to join the dots between her sartorial origins and later successes - they're less contrasting than you'd think.

As Coco, the beautiful Tautou finally manages to shake off the typecasting which has beleagered her since her role as the girl-woman Amelie. Her familiar elfin expressions are replaced by a much harder, almost sardonic countenance, accompanied by a voice which is an octave lower than we are used to and hinting at a worldliness that would shock her previous and most famous incarnation. This is no grand transformation akin to that of Marion Cottillard’s in La Vie En Rose (whose success this movie is clearly designed to emulate), but she shows that she has matured as an actress in this movie and her casting allows us to like, as well as admire, the often scheming Coco. Though the film is at pains to focus on the relationships Coco had with Balsan and Capel, it nonetheless constantly alludes to her as a modern woman, ahead of her time and forging a career independently of a man. As it is, the story is a typical rags to riches tale which, were it not for Tautou's appeal, would be easy to pass over as yet another biopic.

Whether viewed from the perspective of someone who played the snobs at their own game and rose from nothing, or as a woman who refused to be defined by the mores of the time, Coco Chanel was a trailblazer who shows us that no one achieves anything worth having in life by taking the conventional path. I left the movie uplifted by the story and willing to overlook its formulaic telling.

Lindsey Davis 2 Aug 2009