Coco Before Chanel / Creating a biopic on one of the fashion world’s biggest icons can prove troublesome, because even those who might not know who Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was still have an inkling of what she accomplished. When she states that she will become rich from her designs, it’s not a spoiler alert to say that she succeeds.

Ah, but the film is called Coco Before Chanel, (opening Friday at Kahala) and as such we need a backstory. Beginning in 1893 France, Chanel is dumped off as a young girl by her father in an orphanage. Skipping ahead 15 years, she and her sister work as seamstresses during the day and a cabaret singers at night. Her experience of dealing with stuffy women and leering, boozed-up men have soured her, and her responses reflect with such tartness that they border on bitterness. It’s that aspect of Chanel’s mannerisms that make casting Audrey Tautou (Amelie) a brave choice, as Tautou’s natural beauty and pixie-like charm have to be downplayed for an ugly outlook on life, love and men in general. Her contempt falls upon women as well, as she watches them parade past in tight, constrictive corsets. The one thing she does seem to enjoy is finding fashion ideas in unusual places, such as the stitching on a nun’s habit or the fishermen working at the docks.

In the meantime, however, she’s simply unpleasant. When her sister abandons the act for the promise of a privileged life with a rich baron, she’s contemptuous. “A woman in love is helpless,” she says. “Like a begging dog.” But for a woman so against social climbing, Coco Before Chanel shows Coco willing to act with a coupling of impulse and decided premeditation. After a brief tryst with a baron of her own fails to get her a new singing gig, she shows up at his mansion unannounced (“He’s not as dumb as the others. And more chic,” she reasons). As her keeper, Étienne Balsan (played by Benoît Poelvoorde) is sophisticated and worldly, but he’s no match for the ambitious Chanel. He initially hides her away when important guests arrive but she soon crashes the party and makes new friends, including actress Emilienne (Emmanuelle Devos) and Englishman Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola). The former encourages her designs; the latter shows her what love can actually be, with the convenient possibility of paying the costs of opening her own business.

And it’s here that the film stumbles, partly because director and screenwriter Anne Fontaine chooses to be respectful of Chanel’s decisions. There may not have been many options for women in early 20th-century France that didn’t involve using their bodies, but we’re never let on how she felt about her choices. We’re supposed be as comfortable with the fashion icon’s life as Chanel wanted women to be in the clothes she designed–but there’s a pin or two left in and there’s always an unintentional sharp reminder.

Then there’s the problem that Coco, nicknamed as such for the bawdy ballroom song she used to sing, didn’t do much that is memorable before becoming Chanel. The fact that she never married is treated with near-reverence, but it seems that was more out of circumstance than dogged determination. Interestingly, her life story summation omits any mention of her collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, involving yet another of her lovers. By treating its subject as sparsely as the dresses she designed, Coco Before Chanel takes the story of a complicated, fierce woman and turns it into simply another period-piece love triangle involving an uppity woman. The end result is pretty to look at, but its minimalist stance and deliberate choices to ignore Coco after Chanel strains the seams of credibility.

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