Coco Before Chanel (2009)

I'm a guy. Okay. Let's get that out of the bag right now. I'm not overly fond of what I wear. Blue jeans and a t-shirt suit me just fine for most occasions. So when my wife wanted me to watch a foreign film about some gal named "Chanel" who was a famous clothes designer, I felt like I was in for an early bedtime (I can easily fall asleep during boring films).

So we slipped the DVD in and proceeded to watch what I assumed would be an incredibly monotonous film about a lady making clothing. I could hear my wife already: "Oooh. Isn't that beautiful." Or "Look how well she hemmed that pinafore" (whatever the hell a pinafore is ...and can you hem it? I still don't know).

But, much to my surprise, the film was more a myopic on the early life of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. Hence the name Coco BEFORE Chanel. Duh. Guess I should've paid better attention to the title.

There's certainly information and dress-wear visuals throughout, but the movie is more honed toward what made Coco who she would become later in life. Audrey Tautou plays the prime role of Coco and does so with grace, beauty, and a unique gruffness and individuality that struck me as incredibly honest (I did not enjoy her performance in The Da Vinci Code, so this was a nice change). She really carried the entire film and made every scene extremely watchable.

But the screenplay by writer/director Anne Fontaine was what helped keep this film together. Like I said at the beginning of my review, I felt that if it had expressly focused on clothing and the making of clothing, I would've been sawing some serious Zs before 30 minutes into the film. But I wasn't. Similar in concept to The Devil Wears Prada (which I also enjoyed mostly because of Meryl Streeps stellar performance), the film never lingers overly long on things that simply don't matter at that point in Coco's life. It is her lovers, her fiery desire to do something with her life, and her heartbreaks that made her who she would become, not the clothes (those were developing and came later).

So if you're like me, and don't know Chanel from Shinola, you still might give this one a try. Your wife will probably love it, and you'll score some points with her for watching it. Just don't give her the credit cards after finishing it. I just looked online at the cost of Chanel wear and ...well ...you don't wanna know.

If you are looking for a fashion history with lots of dresses a la project runway, this is not your movie. It is a moving portrait of the very early life and influences on Coco Chanel. The film is beautifully shot, scored, acted, and subtitled. As other reviewers have noted for the CD sountrack,the music is fabulous, and the movie is visually gorgeous. The acting is superb. Audrey Tautou is another great french beauty and star; I'm sure I will not be the first to compare her to Katherine Deneuve.

This movie unflinchingly shows the young women of the time for whom love with marriage was rarely an option as they were simply chattel forced to marry well by birth, become nuns, sleep their way to wealth and security as mistresses and courteseans, or have nothing as prostitutes. The only single working women other than prostitutes and a few writers were on the stage, in convents,or providing clothes for wealthy women. The film follows the young Coco through her world as a abandoned child in a catholic orphanage and then a mistress/houseguest of a vastly wealthy nobleman. It touches on her good luck in timing to get her accounts away from her lover in time to save her fledgling business.

We see how the lifestyles and even the health of wealthy and frivolous women were drastically changed by the comfort and function of her designs and her eye for beauty. This picture is a period piece that builds slowly, is very French and assumes you already know a bit about Chanel. It is at times quite subtle leaving a lot of the plot obvious but not presented onscreen. It would companion well with a more detailed documentary like "Chanel Chanel" with Chanel and Lagerfield, but it does present an excellent picture of "Coco's" youth and is a good picture on its own. The whole picture is beautifully acted eye candy and the dessert at the end is lovely as we are given a show of Chanel looks throughout her life. I did not give it five stars only because at times I think it was a bit too subtle as those not familiar with the period could watch the film and not fully understand the dramatic changes in the lives of women led by the dramatic changes in fashion they were witnessing.

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Coco Chanel lied habitually about her life; she didn't like it, so she made up a better one. Anne Fontaine has created one possible version of Coco's formative years, settling on a girl who is perpetually observing, who grows up into a woman who surprises herself with her influence. Audrey Tautou is almost determined to be grim, an anti-Amelie, in her portrayal of this haunted, driven woman. Benoit Poelvoorde is astonishing as Etienne Balsan, one of the men she uses and is used by -and ultimately develops a friendship with. He is bawdy, raucous, jaded ... and falls in love with Coco when it's too late. His scenes with her when he realizes his mistake are mesmerizing. "Does that bother you?" she asks, about her leaving for Paris with Arthur Capel, and he simply replies, "Affreusement (frightfully)." Watch how Poelvoorde turns him from a cad into her friend. And Alessandro Nivola did one of the wildest, dumbest things when he agreed to learn French for this role. It's not clear whether he should be commended or committed. Commended, I suppose, because his accent stays pretty good -and it was a good decision not to cast an English actor precisely because of the accent. It's Nivola's English accent that is a little dodgy here and there. I can't think what to make of his characterization. On the one hand, Coco is attracted to restraint, and presumably he had that personally. On the other, the effect is somewhat that his foreign lines are too studied for him to deliver naturally. Nevertheless an interesting performance from him.

Emmanuelle Devos is always good, and she's great here as a composite of two people in Coco's life at this time. Likewise Marie Gillain as another composite of her sister/aunt.

Coco and her sister were abandoned by their father, raised in an orphanage, and according to the conventions of the time, destined for little but prostitution or the life of a mistress. The movie depicts a silent girl who above all becomes a keen observer of the textures of her world: the nuns' habits, the excesses of women's dress of the period. This point is somewhat overdone by the end of the film, but nevertheless makes the point that she developed her sense of style by paying close attention to everything she saw; in some sense she sensed also that she needed to see more in order for that to develop. Her sense of style, her sense of restraint, became her armor against the pains of her existence, but not even it can protect her at a pivotal moment with Arthur.

At the end, a time-warping retrospective of her work in a re-creation of her famous salon in Paris reminds us that, with little in the way of resources, she made a lasting impression on the world. I found the substance of the movie far more dramatic than I would have thought; impressive performances make it a movie you must see.

Read Best Reviews of Coco Before Chanel (2009) Here

I'll be VERY brief already amazing reviews here.

Please-please don't fogret that the movie is called "Coco BEFORE Chanel".

It's about her childhood and youth and HOW she became Chanel, not about fashion in general...although you can see already how great she will become, how she's changing women's fashion in the beginning of the century simple hats,stunning glorious elegant dresses, no corsets,sailor shirts,mans pants,short hair & coveted little black dress and why...

She's just starting out and the movie is showing you HOW that's the point!!!

P.S.A great movie to see after this one is "Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky" not available yet,it was shown in Cannes and you can see the trailer on Youtube( the book is FINALLY available in States, I bought my copy of Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky in London in 2002.Buy the book for now you won't be able to put it down!!! I read it in 2 days. )

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Audrey Tautou is again fabulous onscreen as the tough as nails independent Coco Chanel. the movie follows her life right up to the point where she decides to actually become a fashion designer.

The sets look terrific and the acting throughout is superb. The ridiculous addition of a fictitious character who plays Coco's sister (in the extars you learn she's an amalgam of Coco's aunt and one of her sisters) to show Coco's gentle side was just plain silly. Given how dramatic Coco's life was it just seems as if the screenwriter and director fell back on some Hollywood tradition of thinking the actual true story of famous people's lives are not enough. The funny thing is this comes out of France of all places.

The extras feature lengthy interviews with the cast and crew. The version I had were the hearing impaired ones that had the various stage movements (i.e., [door closes], [footsteps heard], etc.) along with the subtitles.

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