Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel)

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Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel)

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Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before...

Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, Emmanuelle Devos

A little girl who is sent with her sister to an orphanage in the heart of France, who waits in vain every Sunday for her father to come for her...

A cabaret performer with a weak voice who ...( read more  read more... )sings to an audience of drunken soldiers...

A humble seamstress, who stitches hems at the back of a provincial tailor's shop...

A young, skinny courtesan, to whom protector Etienne Balsan offers a safe haven, amongst the idle and decadent...

A woman in love who knows she will never be anyone's wife, refusing marriage even to Boy Capel, the man who returned her love...

A rebel who finds the conventions of her time oppressive, and instead dresses in her lovers' clothes...

This is the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, who begins her life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey becomes the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style.

Id: 11058878

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Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel) Recent Reviews
  • smith44
    December 29, 2009
    smith44
    Could have been Audrey's La Vie En Rose oscar winner, instead is tedious and tepid. I wanted to see Coco as Channel with her wartime Nazi scandal and all her glamour. Still a fairly interesting look at Coco's rise.
  • jsd35
    December 21, 2009
    jsd35
    Is it just me, or does anyone else thinking this film is heavily sponsored (even suggested by) Chanel? I am certainly not the first to have noticed the strong links between the French movie industry and the fashion industry.

    The movie never ventures beyond the shallows. It skims...( read more) the surface of Coco's life before her company took off, and give us 3 pieces of information: (1) She was an orphan, (2) She worked as a seamstress, and (3) She determined not to marry. It is in the last of these that the film spends most of its time. However, the little information it divulges simply leaves us begging for more answers. At one point the prospect of war (World War I) is mentioned, but we learn nothing of the events in France in either war, or of any role she played in them. Instead it focuses on her seamstress eye for alterations, and her desire to wear unrestricted clothing.

    It's pretty enough. Just not in any way insightful or inspiring.
  • her69eyes
    November 8, 2009
    her69eyes
    Audrey Tautou, with her sparkling eyes and winning smile, established herself as one of our most beloved screen actresses in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie". Oddly enough, perhaps her least glamorous role is that of a fashion designer.

    Coco Chanel is still one of the most signific...( read more)ant names in the world of fashion. Her influence single-handedly changed the way women dressed - gone was the reign of corsets and lace, Chanel's simplistic and rather androgynous fashion sense liberated women into clothes that were at once elegant and comfortable: "I gave women a sense of freedom; I gave them back their bodies." In Anne Fontaine's latest effort, Tautou inhabits the formative years of the woman who would become an icon of the fashion world.

    Beginning in the 1890's, we first meet Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, along with her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillain), working as singers in a bar. There, following a successful performance, she meets Étienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), the man who would entice her to live with him in his mansion. Chanel accepts his invitation, but romantic love with the baron is the farthest thing from her mind: "A woman in love is helpless. Like a begging dog."

    Her resistance to love is compromised when she meets a friend of Balsan's, Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola), who convinces her to leave the baron for Paris. There she begins a career selling hats and dresses, which becomes the prelude to her rise in France's fashion industry.

    The love-triangle at the center of the picture is a bit of a bore. The film doesn't go for high melodrama - it barely passes for drama, in fact. There's no fire, no intensity to the relationships. If the filmmakers didn't wish to make a soap opera, perhaps the film should've been kept to a typical rags-to-riches procedural - here, Fontaine's film seems completely without direction, meandering aimlessly through postcards until the conclusion. It's not necessarily a bad film, but there's nothing much of interest.

    If there's one thing to praise "Coco Before Chanel" for, however, it's the look of the film. Those interested in the fashion industry will not be disappointed - the costume design here is sumptuous, and Christophe Beaucarne's cinematography is exquisite. If only there was a compelling story to match the transendant beauty gracing the screen.
  • Parannoyed
    November 12, 2009
    Parannoyed
    Visually pleasing, Audrey Tautou is simply stunning and delivers a high calibre performance as always. However, there is too much screen time spent telling her love life. I personally would've appreciated seeing more of Coco establishing her career, but what the hell. If women mu...( read more)st be defined in their relations to men, then so be it only because Alessandro Nivola is hot, and hot guys can get away with anything.
    If you're going to see this film, watch it until the end. I guarantee you will be touched during that end scene in the stairs and it will completely change your opinion of the film (well, it did with me. only because I am quite subject to change.).
  • morphine
    December 28, 2009
    morphine
    I think they could have condensed it better; it's not bad but not one of the best autobio movies out there. Too many segmented, forcefed scenes and plots. Tautou is beautiful, as always. Could have been better if it showcased an equal balance of the coco and the chanel.
  • maseflores791
    December 25, 2009
    maseflores791
    Me gustó mucho. PUNTO.
  • daghka
    December 22, 2009
    daghka
    Vivid in many ways but still lacking. The dramatizing was rather pointless as her life was fantastic by itself, overall, it was a very good film but sub-standards due to its stubborn adherence to standards.
  • ViktorExhumed
    December 19, 2009
    ViktorExhumed
    Powerful. Unflinching.
  • jeakeenpinasen
    December 15, 2009
    jeakeenpinasen
    this is good specially for fashion icons
  • rhondajohnson5
    December 12, 2009
    rhondajohnson5
    where is this showing.
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