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FILM REVIEW: COCO BEFORE CHANEL
By Kenneth Turan
Special to the Chicago Tribune
3-1/2 stars

For someone who was as celebrated internationally as France's Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, the woman who changed the shape of 20th century fashion, not much is known for sure about her formative years.

"Chanel lied all the time. She used to say, 'I invented my life because I didn't like my life,'" Anne Fontaine has said. Though Chanel's reticence may sound like a barrier to filmmakers, it stimulated co-writer and director Fontaine and star Audrey Tautou, who collaborated to turn "Coco Before Chanel" into a superior filmed biography.

The most obvious credit goes to the strong, sure performance of Tautou, who not only resembles Chanel, but she inhabits the role completely.

The decision to focus "Coco" on the fashion designer's formative years was made by Fontaine, who cast Tautou before the script was written. Fontaine's earlier films, particularly "Dry Cleaning" and "How I Killed My Father," brought empathy and tact to emotionally complex stories of troubled and troubling relationships.

"Coco Before Chanel" shares with those films a sensitive interest in the destiny of society's outsiders. And no one was more outside the system than Gabrielle Chanel, born poor and abandoned by her father to be brought up in an orphanage run by nuns.

It's in the nature of "Coco Before Chanel" that we have the advantage over its subject: We know of Chanel's success turning fashion almost inside out by creating clothes for women that allowed for movement and freedom. The film uses that by letting us notice things, such as the unusual black and white habits of the Aubazine order that might have influenced the designer almost without her knowing it.

After the orphanage years, we see Chanel living with her sister in the town of Moulins, where they are trying, without much success, to succeed as cabaret singers. Chanel acquires the nickname "Coco" after a famous song of the day.

Even in these early days, the key elements of Chanel's personality - her sharp tongue and formidable will - are present and accounted for. Then, as often happens with ambitious folk, fate takes a hand in Chanel's life, not once, but several times. First, she meets the wealthy horse fancier and playboy Etienne Balsan (the marvelous Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde) and ends up living in his chateau as his mistress.

Bored beyond measure and aghast at the way fashionable people dress, Chanel raids Balsan's closet to create clothes for herself.

She also meets a popular stage actress (Emmanuelle Devos) who is so wild about the hats Chanel has designed for her own use that she starts to wear them herself.

Another friend of Balsan's who has an even bigger influence on Chanel is Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola), a wealthy Briton who so believed in her work he financed her first Paris shop. Capel was also the star-crossed love of Chanel's life, and her struggle to allow herself to feel an emotion she had refused to believe existed is one of the film's most interesting dynamics.

"I know how to express the present," Chanel liked to say, and showing us just how that expression took form and shape is the accomplishment of this satisfying film.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sexual content and smoking).

Running time: 1:50.

Starring: Audrey Tautou (Gabrielle Chanel); Benoit Poelvoorde (Etienne); Emmanuelle Devos (Emilienne); Alessandro Nivola (Boy Capel).

Written and directed by Anne Fontaine; produced by Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Philippe Carcassonne and Simon Arnel. A Sony Pictures Classics release.