Film: Coco avant Chanel

Title: Coco avant Chanel (2009)
Director: Anne Fontaine
Writer(s): Anne Fontaine, Camille Fontaine
Actor(s): Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain
Costume Designer(s): Céline Collobert (wardrobe mistress), Eudald Magri (costumer), Sylvie Néant (crowd dresser)
Rating: PG-13, for sexual content and smoking. I think the film earns this rating. It isn't graphic, but the heroine is basically trading sex for a place to live, so that might be a red flag for a few parents.

I went to see this movie for the costumes and I ended up almost satisfied. The costumes were really beautiful, but there didn't seem to be enough of them. One of the highlights is a scene at a racetrack that is accurate to Chanel's sketches and photographs of the time, but also has some subtle references to Cecil Beaton's costumes for the Ascott sequence in My Fair Lady. Another highlight is a scene near the very end in Chanel's hat store in which she is making absolutely beautiful black fin du sìecle hats. And, of course, Coco's distinctive favorite form of dress they have down to a tee. Possibly the best costume moment is in the beginning, when a young Chanel is being taken to an orphanage and the camera focuses on the details of the backs of the nuns' wimples, showing the way the starched fabric is pleated and shaped into those impressive wings.

The story is about Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel before she started her business. It briefly touches on her success in a forward flash at the end of the film. This translated to a movie experience that made me feel like I was waiting for a pay off that never really came. At the end you see a show of models wearing Chanel garments from various parts of her career. It's a stylistic choice that could have worked, but since we only got to see parts of the outfits it wasn't particularly fulfilling. As much as I hate to admit it, I almost preferred the Lifetime original movie about Chanel, despite Shirley Maclaine being all wrong for the role.

That said, the acting was excellent. Tautou was a very complex Chanel. More than in most films, I enjoyed watching her character change over the course of the film. She was very clearly the same person at a different time of her life at the end of the film. The realism in her range of emotions is really powerful. The entire cast is very good, but Tautou truly stands out.

I don't think I'll watch it again, but it is certainly worth a single showing.