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The Woman Who Banished the Corset
An all-new Coco Chanel biopic arrives this fall
Audrey Tautou plays Coco Chanel
Biopics are streaming out of France, swarming the theaters like summer tourists at the Eiffel Tower. After last year’s well acted and beautifully lensed La Vie En Rose, in which Marion Cottilard gave an Oscar-winning performance as doomed singer Edith Piaf, fans of both French film and fashion can now clamor to the theaters to see Coco Before Chanel.
Born Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel in 1883 and later known as just Coco, Chanel is often cited as liberating women from the corset and giving them permission to “dress for themselves and not for their man.” Orphaned at a young age and rising from poverty she was later helped financially by a millionaire boyfriend, which enabled her to open her first hat shops in Paris. She moved women’s clothing into her shops and the rest is history. Several decades later the Chanel clothing line is still world-renowned as both the epitome of simple elegance and a status symbol for the fashion elite.
Audrey Tautou, best known for the international hit Amelie and who recently became the advertising face of the Chanel line, plays Coco. As opposed to a classic “birth to death” bio, director Anne Fontaine focuses on Chanel’s formative years and struggles that would later shape her outlook and form her legend.
Chanel was often cited as someone who fabricated the truth, this and the fact that her name was misspelled “Chasnel” when her birth was recorded, often only adds to her history as well as making it difficult to document. With Fontaine’s script focusing on Chanel’s early years, her later life—including a legendary affair with a Nazi spy during World War II, arrest and imprisonment by the Gestapo, and her eventual attempt at a fashion comeback—is not covered at all. The filmmakers choose instead to leave the audience with the ideas of Chanel’s early brand of female empowerment and her creation of the modern woman.
A quick made-for-television version of Chanel’s life already aired on American television in the last year, and there is even another film version slated for release. The Tautou film will undoubtedly garner most of the attention and probably will be remembered as the most famous account of Chanel’s life.
Opens in New York September 25.