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