Friday
23Oct2009
Movie Review - 'Coco Avant Chanel'
Friday, October 23, 2009 at 2:11AM | Coco Avant Chanel
Starring Audrey Tautou, Alessandro Nivola, and Benoît Poelvoorde  |
In her performance as Coco Chanel, you can see the wheels turning with Audrey Tautou, the gamine French actress who made such an
indelible mark on audiences eight years ago in Amélie. That's not to say you can see her acting. For a recent example,
watch Hilary Swank in another bio-pic about an important woman from the first half of the 20th century.
With Tautou, as it perhaps was with Chanel, you can see her navigating the chess pieces, from the clothes to the actors. The portrayal is vastly different from Amélie, a determination for herself and for
those around her.
However, this is called Coco Avant Chanel, so the arc of the story leads up to Chanel's great success, so the determination
Coco sees is probably far different here than it would be in the next chapter of her life. There is a matter-of-fact attitude about
Tautou's work, one that is also embodied in Chanel's work; after all, she liberated women from those pageants of inefficient,
cumbersome design of the 19th century, delivering time and again on her ethos, "simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."
There was nothing simple about her life, however. She dared to be different, but not for the sake of being different. As a result,
we know something of the rest of her story. But those early years, a woman bent on making something out of herself but not knowing
precisely what that would be, are pretty revealing, even though we lose the golden era. It might be good to go back in a few years
and give that significant piece in time its own film, too.
If that happens, I wouldn't mind a reunion between Tautou and director Anne Fontaine. That's not because this film is perfect, but
because it's imperfect and feels as though it would take on greater significance as part of a larger story. There's really nothing
wrong with it; it just feels unfinished, as if the best is yet to come.
We get a sense for how Chanel drove herself in life and in love, though love doesn't expressly mean romantic relationships in her
world. There's plenty of that as well, if you're interested. Tautou shares a few great scenes with Alessandro Nivola, portraying English polo player Arthur "Boy" Capel. In addition to their decade-long affair, he was one of the major influences on her style.
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