Movie Review: ‘Coco’ star a perfect fit for role

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Published: November 6, 2009

So much of how history is perceived is tied to the way people looked at any given time, which is just one of the reasons why "Coco Before Chanel” is so compelling: Gabrielle "Coco” Chanel’s aesthetic of elegance and simplicity is quite simply the visual dividing line between the 19th and 20th centuries. In director Anne Fontaine’s depiction of Chanel’s early years, Audrey Tautou ("Amelie”) plays Chanel as fighting against a culture of corsets and slowly converting the world to her ideal of feminine beauty.

Audrey Tautou stars as Coco Chanel in "Coco Before Chanel." Warner Bros. Photo

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"Coco Before Chanel”

PG-13

1:50

3 stars

Starring: Audrey Tautou, Benoit Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, Emmanuelle Devos.

(Sexual content and smoking)

After being raised in an orphanage, Coco and her sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain) go to work in a tailor shop during the day and sing in cabarets at night. While Adrienne is all too willing to be a kept woman, Coco consistently denies the advances of foolish men. When she gains the attention of well-heeled horse breeder Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde of "Man Bites Dog”), she becomes his lover, harnessing his influence and circle of friends to advance her career.

While living on Balsan’s estate, she is able to bring her vision of women’s attire to fruition. As Balsan’s friends, including his sometime girlfriend and actress Emilienne d’Alençon (Emmanuelle Devos), arrive for parties and horse races, Chanel begins dressing as she would like, in menswear-inspired pants and vests, simple hats and a little black dress. Her wearing of that dress at a dance turns all heads, launching what Vogue magazine would later call "Chanel’s Ford” because the design was accessible to women of all classes.

"Coco Before Chanel” follows the designer through her 10-year romance with Arthur "Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola), the English polo player whose investment in his lover’s talent and drive allowed Chanel to open her first millinery shop. After Capel died in 1919, Chanel, who said she would never "be somebody’s wife,” threw herself into building one of the most powerful fashion houses in the industry, a company now celebrating its centennial.

Tautou, now the spokesmodel for Chanel, is an ideal choice to play the fashion icon. She looks strikingly like Coco Chanel did in her 20s and 30s, and much as the actress did in "Amelie” and "A Very Long Engagement,” Tautou plays Chanel as a gamine, a startlingly attractive, rebellious woman who flouts the conventions for feminine beauty and behavior. Even when "Coco Before Chanel” gets bogged down in the traditions and strictures of conventional biography, Tautou is always a magnetic force in the film.

As the title suggests, "Coco Before Chanel” ends just as the designer is gaining power in the industry, and Fontaine parades the attendant shift in style across the screen. Chanel is seen molding the French woman into her own image — an image that eventually took hold around the world.

— George Lang