More sentimental than chic, Gallic biopic Coco Before Chanel nonetheless knits a convincing portrait of the designer's journey from her humble beginnings as a provincial seamstress to the halls of Parisian haute couture.
Coco Before Chanel(Coco avant Chanel)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France, Belgium · 2009
Rated PG-13 · 1h 50m
Director Anne Fontaine
Starring Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain
Genre Drama, History
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Before rising to the top of Parisian haute couture, Gabrielle Chanel was just a young girl in an orphanage, moonlighting as a cabaret singer. When a liaison with a wealthy heir allows her entrance into French society, she begins to develop her gift for designing while throwing out the restrictive trends that defined women's fashion at the time.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Too much of the film feels like one of Balsan’s house parties: undriven, indulgent, quite at ease.
Not an expansive biopic but a fascinating snapshot of a pivotal chapter for Chanel, her formative fashionista years.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Surprisingly intimate and nuanced.
Anne Fontaine’s biopic transforms the designer’s early life into highbrow guilty-pleasure gold.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Tautou is a fascinating, unsmiling, petite presence with a severe brow and an androgynous appeal, so much so that I wish Alessandro Nivola (Junebug) were a more robust beau as Arthur ''Boy'' Capel, the love of Chanel's life.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
The Coco of Fontaine's project--which she co-wrote with her sister, Camille, freely adapting Edmonde Charles-Roux's book L'Irrégulière: ou, Mon itinéraire Chanel--can be described as courtesan before couturiere.
There are indications scattered throughout Coco Before Chanel of a major designer quietly and persistently honing her craft, but most of the film could exist without the Chanel name and still smell like the same perfume.
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