Movies: Coco Before Chanel * * *
(12A, Limited Release)
Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was a visionary, an artist in the true sense in that her revolutionary designs and clothes grew out of her own life and struggle for self expression.
Her rise to fame reads like a rags-to-riches potboiler: it’s a fantastic story, and it’s her early years that writer/director Anne Fontaine concentrates on in Coco Before Chanel.
Born in a Loire Valley poorhouse in 1883, Gabrielle was raised in poverty and later sent to a Catholic orphanage. She grew up spirited and determined, and became a talented seamstress, but money was tight and she and her sister sang songs in a music hall at night.
It’s here that sheget noticed by a playboy aristocrat called Etienne Balsan, and the two begin an affair. By this stage, Coco is becoming frustrated with her exclusion from polite society, and when Balsan repairs to his vast estate, she follows him.
There she maintains a precarious existence as his tolerated live-in concubine, but when some of Balsan’s society friends begin to notice the extrarodinary clothes she has made for her own comfort, they befriend her. She agrees to design a hat for one of Balsan’s actress friends, and her fame begins to spread.
The Chanel story contains tragedy as well as triumph, and Anne Fontaine tells it unfussily and well. And in the role of Chanel, Audrey Tautou is superb, oozing determination and fierce self-reliance. It’s in the visual department that the film is a little underwhelming, and a little more imagination would have gone a long way.
- Paul Whitington
