“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself.  Aloud.” – Coco Chanel

And that she did.  Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was always much more than her fashion house; she enlivened the spirit of her designs with the independence of her life.  At a time when corsets, elaborate dresses, and hats covered with embellishments were the norm, Chanel created a complete new direction for women’s fashion through function and simplicity.  Her aesthetic trumpeted that of Modernism, and her application of it into fashion has made her name exist along the other great artists of the movement.

The many sides of Coco Chanel

But Chanel was a complicated individual to say the least.  As much as she disliked embellishments in fashion, she seemed to relish in them in her own life.  She didn’t just gloss over the details in her life story; she changed the details of it.  Rebellious she was certainly, but seemed haunted by a past that shut her out of the lifestyle that she eventually led as she became famous.  Director Anne Fontaine’s new film, Coco Before Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou, is an attempt to accurately tell the story of Chanel’s life from her childhood forward to right before her success took off into the stratosphere.

We meet the young Chanel as she is being dropped off at an orphanage run by nuns.  The sterility and drabness of the orphanage is more reminiscent of a place to house prisoners than children.  She is so convinced that her father will come back to pick up her and her sister that she runs out every time children leave the orphanage to see if her father has returned; he never comes.

Fontaine lets this linger as a subtext in the film instead of harkening back to her childhood in flashbacks which proves much more effective. More than abandonment, Fontaine quietly suggests through much of the film that Chanel tells lies about her upbringing in an attempt to bring down the roadblocks to her ambition.  French society of the early 20th century wasn’t searching for a Horatio Alger character to uplift.  Your background got you places, not your talents, and Chanel was painfully aware of this from the beginning.  Again this is not beaten over the audience’s head, but instead pervades the film subtly through the presentation of the characters, costumes, and sets that Chanel exists within.  It is through the repressed nature and structured social strata of the time that the uniquely ambitious Coco shines.

And Chanel was full of ambition- an ambition that at times makes her somewhat of an unlikable character onscreen.  But Fontaine is much more interested in exploring the true character of her subject, flaws and all.  In doing so, she bucks the trend of too many biopics that seek to make a hero out of their protagonist instead of addressing realities.  The movie is bravely unafraid to show her climbing the ladder through deceit, sex, and using people to move up to higher places, and the films makes no judgment on her either way.

As a young woman Chanel wants to be a singer and dreams of performing in Paris.  She spends her nights with her sister Adrienne performing in a wild bar and her days as a seamstress, a skill she learned in the orphanage.  While performing at the tavern, Chanel meets Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), a rich playboy, who showers her with compliments and advances.  Chanel is unimpressed, but sees in him her ticket to success.  When he leaves to return to his mansion outside Paris, she follows and maneuvers herself as a permanent houseguest and mistress.

Poelvoorde is completely charming as Balsan.  While being self-centered and lecherous, he nonetheless possesses a spirit that allows him to be intrigued by the unique Chanel, whom he nicknames “Coco” based on a popular song he hears her sing upon their first meeting.  The length that the film commits to Chanel’s stay at Balsan’s mansion never drags, instead it allows for her to accidentally find her way into the world of fashion.

Along the way she meets Balsan’s dashingly handsome friend Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola), and soon finds in him the passionate love that she is missing with Balsan.  In him she thinks she has found her dream man, but both his situation and tragedy soon get in the way of their happiness.  Capel is not a throwaway character by any means, but Balsan remains both more interesting and fully formed.

Chanel defiantly stands out from the rest

Eventually that uniqueness which has kept Chanel out of high society begin to make her shine within it.  To some she is an intrigue; her way of dressing is as opposite to the women around her as it could be.  She seems much more comfortable in the lines and materials of menswear, and when she puts on an elaborate dress bought for her by Balsan she looks uncomfortable and immediately does away with it.  Her simple hats and dresses soon catch the eye of a Parisian actress who befriends her and commissions her to begin creating hats for her.  Soon Chanel’s hats become the fashion trend, and with the help of Capel and Balsan, she is able to open the millinery that lays the groundwork for her future fashion empire.

Together Fontaine and Tautou have brought to life a Chanel worthy of the screen.  Tatou is really magnificent.  She channels the good and bad of Chanel and creates a real person, a real woman who was a trailblazer of her time.  By dealing with only the early part of her life, Fontaine has faced criticism for not dealing with some of the uglier portions of her life.  She was a noted homophobe who reportedly quietly dabbled in bisexuality.  She carried on an affair with a Nazi officer and spy in Paris during World War II that disgraced her forever in the eyes of many of her countrymen in France.  But knowing these things about her, the movie succeeds at creating a Chanel where none of this would seem surprising.  An icon is not necessarily a hero, and Fontaine and Tautou never confuse the two.  Chanel was a complicated person, and to treat her on film in any other way would be a disservice to her and her accomplishments.

The end of the film flash forwards to see Chanel at the height of her fame.  Posed sitting on a mirrored staircase after a successful fashion show, Chanel and her many reflected images look down on the applauding crowd with a mask of confidence that she carried with her through the end of her long life.  The many sides of Chanel created a fashion empire that exists to this day, and her influence unstoppably carries forward a century later, just as the woman herself did.

In French with English subtitles, Coco Before Chanel is playing in select theaters nationwide.  Check www.sonyclassics.com/cocobeforechanel/ for further details.

If you want to see how prolific an actress Audrey Tautou is capable of being, I recommend Amelie as the DVD pick of the week.  In a character as opposite of Coco Chanel as possible, Tautou is relentlessly charming as the good-hearted waitress Amelie.  Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2001 Academy Awards, Amelie made Tautou a break-out star.