Coco Avant Channel - Movie Review
Chanel devotees in droves have been exiting darkened theatres midway through the movie. Fashion editors remain underwhelmed by the flagrant copying of famous publicity stills that serve to dress Audrey Tautou's suffocating hostility. Those who know nothing of the life of Chanel will remain clueless, and those who have devoured her every stormy and controversial minutia will feel grossly insulted by the story's excessive vapidity.
Director Anne Fontaine's film runs overlong, skirts every possibility for character motivation, drops hints at what might be - but never delivers. Through painful meandering, audiences wait for a shoe - any shoe, to drop. It doesn't. Tautou rarely speaks, and when words finally emerge, they are mostly unimportant. The only fashion wit she delivers is with an observation on society women in Deauville: "They look like they're wearing meringues on their heads. I feel sorry for them." Tautou's arrogance is palpable. We get it. But, is that really all there is?
We don't need two hours to learn that Chanel was dumped at an orphanage with her sister, later installed herself as the mistress of mentor Etienne Balsan, and briefly loved one of Balsan's colleagues, Arthur "Boy" Capel.
We don't need two hours to watch her rip apart Belle Epoch bodices, thumb her nose at conventional fashion and morality, and dress mannishly. We don't have to waste time observing her pinning ribbons to plain straw boaters. Beyond that, it takes only minutes to conclude that this latest Chanel iteration has no charisma, no inner spark. Bloodless and calculating, Mademoiselle remains boringly one dimensional, a supreme insult to artistic passion.
The question is why? The answer may well be because Chanel was indeed a calculating, miserable waif who lucked into fashion design. While this is quite true, it is not the whole truth. Yet, time and again, serious attempts to paint Chanel's troubled persona have resulted in obscuring her true identity, thereby rendering her an enigma. Is this deliberate, an unspoken dictum from Karl Lagerfeld and the House of Chanel to filmmakers who need access to Chanel materials? Cynics think so.
In 1969, diehard fashionistas cheered Katherine Hepburn's bravado Broadway performance in "Coco" probably because she yelled "merde" on the stage and because seeing the masterful Hepburn do anything at all was worth the price of admission.
In 1981, Marie-France Pisier portrayed the elusive designer in Chanel Solitaire. Janet Maslin of the New York Times then observed "an erratic, often charming, largely uncommunicative tomboy with a great talent for making hats..." Hence, plus ça change....
Shirley MacLaine took a recent swing at the House that Coco built. Let's not even go there.
More films are due out this year. Perhaps they are cursed with the same predictable outcomes. Great supporting casts, plenty of fashion and gorgeous locales but no insightful accuracy in depicting the legendary figure standing front and centre.
How sad is that?
Published by John Powers
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