Coco Avent Chanel

Chanel’s life interesting, film boring

AUDREY TAUTOU in "Coco avant Chanel."

OK, I like autobiographical films.
The one on Harry Truman, portrayed by Gary Sinise, was shown on HBO years ago and I bought the video and can watch it any time.
But there’s been a few recent efforts that left me, well, pretty unmoved.
I caught “Amelia” the other day, about the famous aviator Amelia Earhart. She was a renowned pilot, had many lovers and disappeared mysteriously. Yet the filmmakers were still able to make her life a bore.
But it towers over “Coco Avant Chanel,” the biography of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, the famous fashion designer.
It starts promising enough, with Gabrielle living in an orphanage. Now films that start in orphanages are usually pretty good. That coupled with it being a biography should make it a real winner.
But somehow despite opulent mansions, nightclubs filled with prostitutes and lots of singing and dancing, this thing is dull, dead in the water.
Coco is played by the usually perky Audrey Tatou. Everybody liked her in “Amelie,” she was so darned precocious and fun.
But somehow, director Anne Fontaine makes Tatou seem plain and uninspiring, right from the start.
Early in the film, we see Coco and sister, Adrienne, played by Marie Gillain, signing novelty numbers in a cabaret, where they must keep pointing out that “the hookers are over there.”
She meets up with rich playboy Etienne Balsan, played by Benoit Poelvoorde. You can sense she doesn’t care for him, but when they lose their jobs and sister decides to marry a rich nobleman, she really has nowhere to go.
So she ends up at the door of Etienne’s sprawling mansion, providing sex for a roof over her head and something to eat.
But after awhile Etienne tells Coco she needs to leave. Coco agrees to go but remembers, oh yeah, she has nowhere to go, so she stays.
Ah, so you can see how she became a famous fashion designer. Right? Well, no.
Did I mention she rode horses even though she didn’t know how to ride a horse? No, that doesn’t really qualify someone as a fashion designer.
She is so bland and the movie offers little insight into this woman. Despite being so plain and lifeless in this film, rich and lazy Etienne wants to marry her. But she won’t marry any man. In fact, she likes girls, too.
But you know what, even that touch fails to make her interesting.
She creates clothes that free women from their corsets and create comfort. Heck, they look like guys’ clothing.
She is credited with getting women out of 19th-century garb.
Fine, but it takes more than two hours for us to learn this.
So we see more of her life. She has friends. Some die.
Eventually we hit 1971 and we learn she died.
Good. Movie over.
Maybe the next biographical film will be better.
If I hadn’t let someone borrow my copy of “Amelie,” I’d watch that again.

COCO AVENT CHANEL • Directed by Anne Fontaine • Written by Fontaine and Edmone Charles-Roux • Rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking • Runtime: 105 minutes • French with English subtitles • 2 stars out of 5

Bigger Than Life

Dad goes berserk in ‘Bigger Than Life’

JAMES MASON (far right) wants the best for his wife, played by Barbara Rush, in "Bigger Than Life."

Ed Avery was a junior high teacher in the 1950s.
He had a good rapport with the kids. He obviously enjoyed his job. But this is the 1950s. He didn’t make much money.
He certainly could not expect his wife to work, so he gets a second job at a taxi cab company.
But Avery’s world goes into more disarray when he suddenly has blackouts.
“Bigger Than Life” stars the great James Mason as Avery in this story of 50s family bliss that turns ugly.
That nonworking wife, Lou, is beautiful and wears a dress and earrings while working about the house. She is played by Barbara Rush.
Christopher Olsen plays their son, Richie.
Mason goes to a physician to find out why he is having the blackouts. The doctor discovers a rare disease and prescribes a steroid, cortisone, to treat him.
He becomes dependent on the drug and makes excuses to obtain extra prescriptions.
It quickly causes changes in his personality. At a parent-teacher conference, he lectures the shocked parents about what is wrong with their children, while lighting up a cigarette. Apparently even in the 1950s, you don’t light up in school.
At home his manic-depressive personality shows.
He wants his son to be more competitive in football and announces if he misses another catch, he won’t get lunch.
His actions and personality become more bizarre. His best friend and fellow teacher, Walter Matthau, is concerned as well.
The film has been compared with the more recent “The Shining,” in which Jack Nicholson and his family live in an isolated resort alone for the winter to handle routine maintenance. But Nicholson slowly descends into insanity.
In “Bigger Than Life,” Mason’s character gets more and more irrational. He demands to know why a glass of milk is missing from the pitcher.
When son decides to find the offending pills and dump them, Dad really gets angry. He quotes the Bible and comes to the shocking conclusion he must kill his son.
The movie was filmed in Cinemascope, a process requiring a larger screen and was designed to fight competition from the small screen, that being television.
The movie is decidedly 50s. Even when her husband acted bizarre, wife was respectful and agreeable because that’s what wives did. It was only when he got to the point maybe the child should die she decided he was a bit too unreasonable.
Today, a father who sits around the house wearing a bowtie would seem strange enough. In Mason’s world, it was perfectly permissible.
Special kudos goes to Christopher Olsen, playing the young boy who sees his father descend into madness. Olsen made several films but stopped acting in 1959 after a couple of episodes of “Lassie.”
As an aside, Marilyn Monroe was making “Bus Stop” on an adjoining stage at 20th Century Fox and appeared in a cameo as a nurse. But the scene was cut because the studio worried Monroe would use it as the second film she was required to do under her contract.
This is a gripping film worth watching, not just for the story and actors, but the overall tone and great 50s atmosphere.


BIGGER THAN LIFE • Directed by Nicholas Ray, written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum • Not rated, too intense for young children • Runtime: 95 minutes • 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Obsessed

It’s not quite ‘Fatal Attraction’

IDRIS BELBA and Beyonce Knowles in “Obsessed.”

It’s not the most original concept for a movie.
And the ending leaves a LOT to be desired.
But come on, “Obsessed” isn’t that bad of a film.
This is almost a remake of “Fatal Attraction,” except no family pet gets cooked on the stove and the husband stays true to his wife. It’s just nobody believes him.
Idris Elba plays Derek, a likable vice president of a high-classed company who loves his wife, played in lackluster fashion by Beyonce Knowles.
He seems to have a great life. He has a beautiful wife, a 2-year-old son. He’s just moved into a cavernous house.
Among initial conflict in the film is, should they leave the mirror over the bed in the master bedroom?
On his way to his office one day, he finds himself alone in the elevator with a temporary employee, Lisa, played by the luscious Ali Larter.
They make small talk. She drops papers. He helps her pick them up. She flashes her eyes and her skirt.
After a day as a secretary, she becomes his aide for a week while the regular guy is out with a cold.
All seems fine except she seems too good to be true. She knows just what to do. She knows his routine. And was she listening in on his private conversation?
Now Derek’s wife had the aide position before the guy Lisa is filling in for.
Lisa smiles, she stops in the office. She gets the boss a bootleg of his favorite band.
The company Christmas party is coming up and it apparently is open to temp workers, but not spouses, even if they are former employees.
Derek uses the bathroom before going home, but is suddenly pushed into a stall by Lisa, who tries to seduce him. He runs out.
The next day, clad only in sexy underwear, she jumps into his car. He screams at her to get out.
Derek decides he better tell wifie about the events, but she feels down because her sister found out her husband was cheating. Derek decides that isn’t the best time to talk to her about Lisa.
Like in any cliché movie, Derek thinks Lisa is out of his life, but she never is.
When he goes on a retreat with his boss and fellow workers, there she is and this time she slips into his room and takes an overdose of drugs.
Wife learns about it and shows up at the hospital with Derek and a police detective, who takes an unusual interest in the case. Are there places police investigate for days suicide attempts?
Larter and Elba are pretty decent actors. They keep the suspense up and the drama flowing. Beyonce needs a little work in the believability factor.
But there are big problems. If Elba’s character acted smart like he is portrayed and reported her actions, the problems would have ended.
And the ending is not only stupid but it builds to a climax and then doesn’t really deliver.
All of the characters act like they are supposed to in order to advance the plot of a Grade B movie.
It isn’t terrible but another revision or two would have helped with “Obsessed.”

OBSESSED
• Directed by Steve Shill
• Written by David Loughery
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rated PG-13 for sexual material including some suggestive dialogue, violence and thematic content
• 3 stars out of 5