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Coco Avant Chanel (DVD)
Year: 2009
Rating: PG
Director: Anne Fontaine
Cast: Marie Gillain, Alessandro Nivola, Benoit Poelvoorde, Audrey Tautou
Release Date: November 30, 2009
Distributor: Warner
The Film: 4.0
The Disc: 4.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5
In this sprawling biopic, we first meet the titular fashion icon as the young Gabrielle Chanel (Audrey Tautou), just as she's being abandoned at an orphanage. The story then skips ahead several years to when Chanel is working as a seamstress in Moulins, but wanting a career as a singer. It's in the cabaret clubs that she gets her nickname Coco, and meets the wealthy Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoodre). After becoming Balsan's mistress and a permanent fixture at his country estate, Chanel chafes against the hypocritical morals and tight corsets of upper class society, designing loose dresses and unadorned hats for friends. But it's the arrival of the self-made English industrialist Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola) to the estate, and their ensuing love affair, that helps Chanel fully realise her creative potential.
The history of Chanel's relationships has been compressed, and the love triangle plot slips into melodrama occasionally, but director Anne Fontaine generally keeps a steady hand on the action, returning to Chanel's analysis and experimentation with clothes. The sequences of her working with fabric are rightfully imbued with the passion and tenderness of any love scene, while a strong selection of extras (commentary, seven making-of featurettes) provides ample background on the real life Coco Chanel.
