The worldwide biopic obsession has spawned
another dull chunk of hagiography, this time from France’s Anne
Fontaine (who directed the juicier The Girl from Monaco).
Coco Before Chanel, as indicated by the title, is about
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (Audrey Tautou) before she became a
designer. It’s a fine idea; instead of rushing through formative
pre-fame experiences or relegating them to flashbacks, the filmmaker
makes the buildup to Chanel’s success the focus of her story. The
problem is that Chanel’s life before she hit it big seems to have been
largely uninteresting, and it is rendered even more so by Fontaine’s
tasteful period treatment.
The film traces Chanel’s path from orphan to singer/seamstress to
protégée of a rich playboy to lover of one of said
playboy’s friends. Last time I checked, we cared about Chanel because
she brought comfort and simplicity to punishing women’s attire, not
because she was a social climber. The film nods obviously at its
heroine’s sartorial tastes (she scorns feathered hats and
straitjacket-like corsets), but her talent comes off as little more
than a symptom of boredom with froufrou French society. And boy was I
bored by this froufrou French movie. Without the fashion angle,
Coco Before Chanel is another tale of a strong-minded woman
flouting convention, and as such it offers little to grab on to. Part
of the problem is Tautou, whose cutesy Amélie Poulain persona
clings to her like—gulp—a Chanel sweater; struggling to
make her doe eyes and heart-shaped mouth look tortured, she mostly
looks like… Amélie Poulain in a shitty mood.
The ultimate culprit is Fontaine, who brings bland observational
compositions and genre clichés—lovemaking in the rain, a
first trip to the sea, swirling ballroom dances—to material that
would need a sharp point of view to pull us inside Chanel’s intertwined
worlds of loneliness and ambition. The movie leaves you with the
depressing feeling that not everyone deserves a biopic. 