Coco Chanel: Der Beginn einer Leidenschaft

What do you want in a foreign period film? Beautiful locations? Check. Class struggle? Check. Subtitles? Check. All that's missing is urgency.

Coco Chanel is a French legend. The designer of the ground-breaking haute couture style, creator of the huge fashion brand Chanel, and a forward-thinker in terms of women's independence. Chanel is a complex and dynamic personality. Makes me want to see a movie called "Coco During Chanel". But "Coco Before Chanel"? Not so much.

Audrey Tautou does a commendable job of playing Chanel in her early years (and looks a lot like Chanel in the movie's later scenes). Adding complications to the idea is the fact that there is little known about Chanel's youth, and what is known often has conflicting stories. But be prepared, what does happen in "Coco Before Chanel", happens slowly. This, in a movie that portrays the French elite as people with crazy money, outlandish parties and a constant desire to quench their boredom. I desired the same.

Although she often denied it, Chanel was brought to an orphanage early in life (this was denied mainly to prevent preconceptions of her as an undesirable). The film sharply cuts to late teens/early twenties Coco (real name, Gabrielle), singing with her sister in clubs to make a buck. It was the plight of women in the 1890s to find a man or fear being lost in society. Coco's sister was beholden to a man for thirty years, and he FINALLY married her after his parents died so he wouldn't have to explain to them that he married an orphan (for shame!). This assnine mentality is certainly worth rebelling against, but Coco remains passive for too much of the movie. She is taken in by a wild playboy named Balsan (expertly played by Benoit Poelvoorde) and is mistreated by him for years. Chanel wants to answer to no man and wants to design clothes that avoid the feathers and corset that alter a woman's natural body. But again, this is done with little dramatic flair and many, many pages of slow-moving script. Coco came off as a little too inert for a little too long.

This movie is the first of the late-year potential Oscar nominees. Tautou's performance is a maybe, but the costume design is a sure thing, and rightfully so. The Chanel style is famous, they have to nail it, and they did, while also building gorgeous period outfits for the rich, end-of-century French culture and a few military outfits as well.

The score by Alexandre Desplat does a lot to enhance a few of the scenes, and the cinematography is lush. I want to give a special nod to Alessandro Nivola, who's very good here and very good in everything, but the guy doesn't appear in enough high-profile stuff. He sits very comfortably in the French language here and smolders in some of his more romantic moments like a poor man's Ralph Fiennes.

A traumatic event late in the film propels Coco to launch into her designing full speed. That moment felt a little rushed and the whole ending follows suit. What I wanted at the end was the "Coco During Chanel" movie to start, so, then, that could be kind of a success for the film? But remember, I wanted "Coco During Chanel" going in, so really, the whole 'before' story just felt like slow filler. Frills, perhaps? Padding?

COCO AVANT CHANEL simply means Coco's life before Chanel as we know her now. So here is a film about her 'then'. This very well produced film has many pluses and two glaring and irritating minuses. On the plus side we have a costly film that displays delicious art direction and production values with lavish or complicated vintage scenes set in extravagant re creationed times or within gorgeous mansions and breathtaking seaside locations... all with superb costumes. However, this film, more about an hour of its running time suffers from the same annoying factors that spoiled the recent film MA VIE EN ROSE, the bio pic of Edith Piaf: 1: a cranky and rude personality who is ungrateful when benefactors assist and 2: idiotic photography closeups where the hand held camera darts about between people talking or following someone's hands when they are doing something eg: Coco is at a table sewing so the camera is gawking about in closeup of her reaching for things. There are several grand set pieces: racetrack and ballroom magnificence, well dressed and filmed and a fashion sequence later in the story that is (again) all too brief. The first 40 minuets of orphanage and cabaret misery and rudeness mirror LA VIE EN ROSE too much and only later when Coco falls in love with "Boy" (Alessandro Nivola) and they romance by the sea does the film lighten a bit and she actually for a few minutes becomes likable. Oherwise it is Gallic aloofness well dressed but at odds with allowing the audience in too far.

"Coco before Chanel" is exactly that; the life of an impoverished girl up until the start of what became a fashion empire.

This I must say is a different kind of a biopic. There was some sort of subtleness about it, everything was going too slow and not much was happening in terms of demonstrating that this hopeless little girl from nowhere had this extraordinary talent for cloth-making. Yes we did see her advocating simplicity in times of great extravagance and even dressing up (probably) her first clients but had the viewer not been aware of the brand "Chanel" he or she would have to wait until the finishing titles to realise Coco turned out to become a fashion icon.

If there is one thing about Coco is that she was a rebel; in a late 19th century puritan society she stood up for what she believed, refused to get married and instead of settling for a wedlock with a rich spouse she chose to live the adventure, go to Paris and start up a hat shop.

It seems however that her rebellious nature extended to her design skills. To use her own words: "Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance." Coco Chanel always kept the clothing she designed simple, comfortable and revealing. Unlike most designers in that Europe, she kept the woman inside the clothes at the center of her creations. "I gave women a sense of freedom; I gave them back their bodies: bodies that were drenched in sweat, due to fashion's finery, lace, corsets, underclothes, padding." Perhaps it was fate or desperation from her impoverished upbringing but the affair with the playboy millionaire and, later, his best friend were pivotal to give her the push she needed to make a start. Though not an expert on French upper class culture but were quite impressed how civilized and elegant the two men were when it came to loving and pursuing the same woman.

All in all a decent film but no wow factor.

I love Chanel. I can't actually afford the clothes, but that won't stop me from liking them. Just like reading one or two bad reviews didn't stop me from wanting to see 'Coco Avant Chanel'.

The first part of the movie seemed very promising. It didn't take me long to like Coco's character, and everything seemed to have a reasonable pace. Then the movie zooms in on Coco's relationship with 'Boy' and you keep hoping things get interesting, but they don't.

I spent most of the movie admiring the wonderful atmosphere while the lovebirds exchanged meaningful looks. I would have liked this movie more if it paid more attention to things like Coco's hat shop, rather than a relationship of which we all know the ending anyway.

The best thing about this movie is the wonderful atmosphere, but if you don't like slow romance you can skip this one.

Coco Before Chanel (2009)

Audrey Tatou has had a heck of a time maturing from her astonishing role in Amelie (2001), and if she showed her young true self better in He Loves Me (2002), she faltered badly in The Da Vinci Code. Now, playing the young Coco Chanel, she seems to have some solid footing. Oddly, it is partly by playing a part that requires seriousness, even a dour gloom. It's a solid role and a good performance.

The idea of the story is odd, in a way, because it shows very little of those turning points in Coco Chanel's early career as a fashion maven (and this is what we really are dying to see). This really is before Chanel, the brand, and at first it comes off a little routine, showing the young years, and her trying to get out of having to do silly song and dance acts. Eventually she moves up and meets people of influence (the two always go together, don't they?), and turns a corner by making hats for some well off women who have taken to them, and to her.

What makes the movie interesting is Chanel's relationships with other men, two in particular, and in the general libertine scene she found herself joining, if not always liking. She does find love, maybe twice (one more paternal, replacing the father who abandoned her as a child). And all three male actors are spot-on believable.

As is Tatou. The whole affair is interesting but with little magic or surprise. It's well made and well paced and you won't get drowsy, but expect a routine exploration. And learn something about a truly self-made woman who would change the look of the Twentieth Century, head to toe.