MOVIES HAVE ALWAYS been a rich source of fashion inspiration, but movies about fashion usually don’t wear well. They tend toward the fanciful (Funny Face) or the farcical (The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City), assailing the eyes with ridiculous getups posing as haute couture.
Unlike fashion movies that emphasize spectacle, Coco Before
Chanel, a French biopic about the early years of legendary designer
Coco Chanel, is about the origins of style. Writer-director Anne
Fontaine’s screenplay illustrates how Chanel’s hardscrabble childhood
— she was raised in an orphanage after her mother’s death —
informed her practical, accessible designs. Rejecting the era’s tight
corsets, puffy gowns and feathered hats, she created sleek, comfortable
clothes: trousers, little black dresses, signature collarless suits
enhanced by ropes of chains and pearls.
Coco is played with a look of feral determination by gamine Audrey
Tautou. Born Gabrielle Chanel, she acquires her nickname from a song
about a lost dog she sang in bistros. After losing her singing gig,
Coco arrives uninvited at the country estate of her sometime lover,
wealthy playboy Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), who
keeps her as a closet concubine, hidden away from his rich friends.
Balsan’s actress lover (Emanuelle Devos) notices her talent and enlists
her to design hats and costumes.
Coco, who never married, has little use for love, observing that “a
woman in love is like a begging dog.” Love finds her briefly, when
handsome Englishman “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola) romances her and
breaks her heart, which quickly recovers when he finances her design
business.
If you’re not the kind of person who’s fascinated to learn where
Chanel got the idea for her striped tunics (a fisherman she saw at the
seashore) or her pioneering use of jersey (Boy’s polo shirts), this
probably isn’t your movie. Fashion aficionados will find it a nuanced,
if slightly overlong, biography in an elegant style befitting its
subject.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2009.