Coco Avant Chanel
Director: Anne Fontaine
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Benoit Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola
Releasing in cinemas: 25 June 2009
Rated: M

Classic in every way

Elegant as its central figure, Coco Avant Chanel is a stylish pastiche of memories and moments from the life of legendary coutourier, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel.

The film opens on ten-year old Gabrielle being taken to an orphanage with her sister, following he mother's death. It then skips quickly to Chanel's late teens where both sisters are sewing hems for a tailor by day and performing girlish ditties in a seedy cabaret bar by night. Wanting more for her life than smiling sweetly for drunken soldiers, Gabrielle courts a wealthy benefactor, Etienne Balsan (whom the film credits with devising her nickname, Coco, after a particular song in her cabaret act) and proceeds to lavish as a guest cum occasional lover in his country manor while she develops the confidence and will to make her own path.

During her time with Balsan she meets and falls in love with English industrialist Arthur 'Boy' Capel (Alessandro Nivola), and becomes friends with Parisian stage actress Emilienne (Emmanuelle Devos), who becomes her first customer, commissioning hats and simple costumes. We see Chanel slicing up the clothing of her male counterparts and tailoring them for her slight female form (without a corset - gasp!), as well as dressing exclusively in her trademark monochromatic , clean-cut and flowing attire.The film jumps from scene to scene with very little reference to particular dates, instead focussing on the moments in Chanel's life that could have provided inspiration for her unique style. The director also delights in imagining the circumstances surrounding some of the most celebrated photographs of Coco Chanel, inlcuding her famous mariners' striped jumper, and working in her millinery studio, cigarette to lips.

While the filmmaker does purport to have based the film on a biography of Chanel by Edmonde Charles-Roux, there seems to be little actual historical information available about her life before becoming a fashion powerhouse. Chanel fans are already critical of the loose interpretation and non-sequential turn of events in the film, and the story ignores the designer's successful years, when some of her most notorious and well-documented relationships and activities occurred. The result is a quiet, pensive and stylised film - perhaps an accurate reflection of it's subject's own personality.

The movie's success rides on its performers - and they all deliver. Audrey Tautou is im bued with the very essence of Chanel, strong yet vulnerable, stylish and unique. The detail in her performance, the gestures, the expressions are all eerily reminiscent of the title character. Her lovers, Benoit Poelvoorde as Etienne and Alessadro Nivola as the shy 'Boy' Capel are equally mesmerising in their somewhat opposing manners of loving and supporting Coco.

Filmed on location around paris and in Normandy, including the actual shop where Chanel first made and sold her hats (still owned and operated by the House of Chanel today), the beautiful cinematography by Christophe Beaucarne, evocative moody lighting and selective focus show the world through Chanel's eyes - her inner adventures and love stories, what appealed to her, how she perceived society.

As well as having access to the Chanel conservatoire of accessories, original costumes were created for the film by award winning Catherine Leterrier. The retrospective design process (Leterrier says she worked backwards from Chanel's most famous pieces to imagine how they have come about in their most original form) also included reprinting vintage silks and incorporating tweed into the menswear - another Chanel favourite, and would have been considered innovative at the time. It would be criminal to screen a film about Coco Chanel that doesn't feature the creation of her signature items - tweed suits, strings of pearls, the little black dress - and the costumes are truly sumptuous.

Coco Avant Chanel will no doubt attract a legion of fashionista audiences, but the fine filmmaking and stylish storytelling should appeal to a wider and more conservative cinema-goer as well. Treat yourself to a sophisticated evening of champagne and Chanel at the cinema.

Belinda Yench

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