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'Coco Before Chanel'
I hasten to add this movie can be enjoyed even by people who are fashion-challenged. In fact, Chanel's ideas about style occur to coincide with my very own: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. If you don't trust me, check out a few of the ladies' hats within this film. Before Chanel came along, they frequently resembled feathery, upturned fruit bowls. Consider Chanel as the anti-Carmen Miranda.
"Coco Before Chanel," that was directed by Anne Fontaine and co-written together with her sister Camille, shares the designer's aesthetic of modesty. With no great deal of fuss the film moves us along the trajectory of Coco's life from her humblest beginnings to her success within the finest salons.
Likely to aha moment in early stages, though it's understated. Coco has been placed, along with her sister Adrienne (Marie Gillian), within an orphanage run by nuns, whose wimples she admires for his or her stitching. This is probably the only movie to suggest a link from a nun's habit and haute couture, however it constitutes a lot of sense.
Coco winds up a seamstress who, to create ends meet, entertains nightly at a provincial music hall. Fending off a mans customers who mistake her for any prostitute, the chain-smoking Coco seems as tough as any dame from the 1940s film noir. She resents the slobbery advances of her admirers but she also knows that the only method to succeed in this society is through the ministrations in men.
She becomes the mistress of a scamp sophisticate, Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), who comes complete with his own country estate. Coco soon occupies residence. The relationship between your older Étienne and Coco is complex. Not even close to being submissive, Coco rails at him for his indiscretions, such as hiding her away in the kitchen area when fancy close friends and family show up. She also influences his fashion sense, that he's duly grateful. (The way to a lover's heart is through his lapel?) She also infiltrates Étienne's dinner get-togethers and befriends an important actress (Emmanuelle Devos) who propels her fashion career.
When Coco occupies having a handsome young English businesssman who passes the name of "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola), the film loses a number of its edge. Fontaine presents the pairing like a woozy bout of lovelorn lyricism. To my eyes "Boy" Capel is simply a refined types of cad, which does not make him much better than the ungentlemanly Étienne, although Coco - and, more to the point Fontaine - seem to think so.
However this wooziness is largely dissipated by Tautou's performance, that is unsentimental even if Fontaine is piling on the hearts and flowers. Tautou was charming in "Amélie," but she's been playing that very same cutesy tune for too long. "Coco Before Chanel" elevates her to a new class being an actress. It's as if the dewiness of her earlier roles had shed. Instead is a fierce singularity.
I wish Fontaine would contact a sequel: "Coco After Chanel." Tautou's performance cries out for any second act. Grade: B+ (Rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking.)