The fim: Coco avant Chanel

Let me start this review off saying I love the house of Chanel and I am constantly fascinated by the life Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel ; her experiences during World War 2 and how something she created Chanel all those years ago in a world which is still a man;s world. So I popped down to the cinemas last night, coincidentally the very night of the Fall 2009 Haute Couture show, and was a little disappointed.

Stepping away from the glamour of high fashion, Anne Fontaine’s biopic Coco avant Chanel (Coco before Chanel) was to be a story of a young woman’s rise from poverty to riches. But instead every moment seemed fleeting, tied together by a puff of a cigarette or sullen glance. The movie refrains from delving too deeply into the beginnings of one of fashion’s first trailblazers and leaves more questions than answers. What happened at the orphanage besides the Sunday ritual of hoping that she may get a visit from her father and where she shared a room with many girls but didn’t seem to have any friends besides her sister Adrienne?

We quickly move to a saloon where the sisters work at night, where men buy them drinks and Coco is less than friendly with the patrons. Her interactions with men were blunt to say the least, not bothering to feign interest like the other women.

So perhaps it was the men in her life that made Chanel so independent, seeing men, especially Etienne Balsan as someone to put up with, just to be allowed to stay at his mansion. It was her time at his estate that was quite a focus for Fontaine. It was where we saw Chanel steadfastly refusing to dress up in the fru-fru garb of the time, instead cutting up Balsan’s clothes to create androgynous looks of her own. She learnt how to ride bareback (unlike other women in those days who still rode sidesaddle), created hats for actress friends of Balsan;s and finally where she met a man that was depicted as the love of her life, Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel.

Capel ultimately helped Chanel start her business and gave her the motivation to do so, but it’s no love story for the ages as the films depiction of the love affair left me feel a little empty and wondering, what really made Coco Chanel tick? Chanel may have spun tall tales about her beginnings, but the movie skimmed over so much that you never truly understood how the mind of a woman with some very modern feminist views was shaped.

Both Fontaine and Audrey Tautou fail to bring Chanel alive, making this documentary one that can be missed if you have to fork out for a movie ticket – or have something better to do. It’s no fairytale.

For a more fasinating look inside the house of Chanel, perhaps watch the documentary, Signe Chanel, which looks into how a haute couture collection is created.

If you’re still keen to see it in cinemas, it hits British screens on July 31 with a US release set for September 25th. Check out IMDB for the list of releases in your country.

The trailer: