Coco Avant Chanel
On a windy afternoon in New York, I made my way to The Paris Theatre to take in a matinée of the latest French import to hit New York soil: Anne Fontaine’s “Coco Avant Chanel.”
What better theatre to take in a French film than the familiar darkness of The Paris, home to slightly saggy, toothpaste-green velvet seats flattened by years’ worth of rumps hollowing them out like a good, hard rain. Grandiose but lived-in, established and aging mostly well, the theatre is a bit of Paris away from Paris and a necessity for the Francophile away from spiritual home.
The Origins of Style
From the start, Fontaine makes clear that the star of “Coco Avant Chanel” is not a celebrity fashion plate. In fact, Audrey Tatou as “Coco” has only three main costume changes throughout the entirety of the film; a comment as much about the designer’s low beginnings as her refusal to don the feathers, jewels, and corsets that symbolized a decadence she despised.
Instead, Fontaine’s film focuses on the early life experiences that led an orphan to become the most recognized female name in fashion. With gritty realism interposed with moments of grace, she shows how Coco Chanel led a generation of women to trade in their corsets and feathers for fisherman’s stripes and the black and white color scheme of country nuns.
“Coco Avant Chanel” opens with a jarring image between the slats of a wagon; sky and French countryside merge before the unceremonious dropping off of the Chanel sisters at the Obazine Orphanage.
In the first of several “epiphany” moments in the film, the camera, and time, seem to slow as the young Chanel takes in the image of two nuns at the orphanage. The camera approaches them from behind; faceless, we see their bodies draped in black dresses with crisp white bonnets like butterflies, reminiscent of the head gear in Vincent Van Gogh’s “Breton Women.”
The world of the film stills; Coco has found her colors.
Flash-forward to a cabaret called “Moulins” 15 years later, where a young Coco and her sister sing cheeky songs, their “theme” a ditty about a missing puppy named Coco—the origin of Chanel’s (neé Gabrielle) nickname. The sisters are easy to pick out in the cabaret crowd: they sport plain, plaid dresses with collars up to the neck, distinguishing themselves from the scantily-clad prostitutes who ply their trade at the bar.
The plainness of clothing is jarring, unsophisticated, even embarrassing on a character one associates with the pinnacle of fashion, but one has to remember the “little black dress” and “understated style” were not always à la mode. In these early scenes, Fontaine explores the roots of Chanel’s disdain for the overdone by showing Chanel’s disgust at the overt sexuality of the prostitutes’ bodies spilling out of corsets and into the hands of the cabaret’s wealthy patrons. In a later scene, Chanel’s distaste for flashy displays of wealth are verbalized as she walks among wealthy women preening at a beach, calling their elaborate hats “meringues” and their multiple necklaces glittering in the heat “cutlery.”
Although Coco rejects the over-the-top display of sex and money in dress, she was not above using her body as a source of income; at her sister’s suggestion, she becomes the mistress of an ex-patron, the playboy Étienne Balsan, played with aplomb by Benoît Poelvoorde.
In contrast to the stillness of the camera when it rests on Chanel’s ideal of beauty in the everyday world, the decadence of the wealthy debauchees that congregate chez Balsan are shown as swirls of constant motion. Mobile games of “hide and seek” with lights on and off alternately illuminate and hide glimmers of satin, jewels, and fur. The camera’s gaze is restless; no woman stands out amongst the Picasso-like jumble of bedecked body parts.
No women stand out, that is, but two: Chanel in drag and the magnetic Emmanuelle Devos as Émilienne, a successful actress and frequent guest at Balsan’s parties. In the film, Émilienne takes an interest in the budding designer, and asks her to dress her like an orphan for Balsan’s costume ball. Chanel concocts a plain black dress with a white collar up to Émilienne’s throat, an echo of her uniform from her Obazine days.
“Shouldn’t it be ripped?” The actress complains, looking at her covered thighs and chest in the mirror.
Sounding like the mother of teens everywhere, Coco replies that the lack of flesh on display is the point—it’s sexier to leave a woman’s body to the imagination.
On The Place of Men
In one memorable line, Tatou as Chanel exclaims, “The only good thing in love is making love. Too bad you need a man for that.” American audiences associate Audrey Tatou with her character in the 2001 film “Amélie,” an innocent ingénue dreaming of love. Echoes of Amélie are present in Tatou’s ability to convey her joy at sensory pleasures, like her blissful gaze as her character looks upon the ocean for the first time, observing fisherman pulling in nets at water’s edge (for the next several scenes of the film, Chanel sports the striped sailor’s shirt that she made into a fashion icon.) While there are moments of romance and idealism in Fontaine’s film, they are overshadowed by the darker realities of commerce and the volatile relationships Chanel endured before extricating herself from a web of male benefactors. Chanel never married, and Fontaine’s troubled depiction of her love life goes a long way in explaining the designer’s fierce independence.
The stormy exchanges—both bodily and verbal—between Balsan and Chanel are among the most disturbing and powerful scenes of the film. Initially, Balsan hides Coco upstairs and forces her to dine in the kitchen out of sight from the jockeys, actresses, and high society members he entertains almost nightly. In one particularly dark scene, he comes to her after a night of debauchery downstairs and drunkenly tries to force himself on her. In a masterful performance, Poelvoorde places his body on top of hers, relishing his power while reminding her of her place in his home.
When Balsan threatens to turn Chanel out, she takes up her seamstress’s sisters and takes them to the clothing of her “master”—re-appropriating the clothing of a man to fit her own body. In an era where women rode sidesaddle, she dons pants, shirt, and tie and straddles one of her master’s prized racing horses in a pose similar to one he recently used to control her. Astride Balsan’s most valuable possession, she interrupts his garden party to show she, too, shares his interests—and should be kept on in the house.
Clothing, then as now, is an indicator of both status and power. In cutting her lover’s clothing down to her size, Chanel claimed an individual voice and ownership of her image. With the power dynamic permanently altered, she ultimately leaves Balsan to start her own business in Paris. The rest is fashion history.
Verdict:
Fans of Chanel’s designs won’t find much of her famous clothing here, save for a fashion show/homage tacked on at the end of the film, where an ageless Tatou as Chanel observes her most famous fashions paraded down a spiral stairway and out to a symbolic public.
Audrey Tatou is a quiet powerhouse, conveying more by her eyes than by the scant dialogue allowed her. Poelvoorde is convincingly angering, but the real star of the film is the piercing gaze of the camera from Chanel’s perspective, picking up beauty in the most unexpected of places.
“Coco Avant Chanel” is a long film that leaves off just as Chanel’s career takes off, but fans of the designer and those ready to see Tatou in a darker, more adult role will find moments to love.
New York Showtimes:
City Cinemas Paris Theatre
4 West 58th Street, New York, NY 10019
(212) 688-3800
10:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 2:30 PM, 5:00 PM, 7:30 PM, 9:50 PM
Clearview’s Chelsea
260 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
(212) 777-FILM 597
10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, 1:30 PM, 3:00 PM, 5:45 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:00 PM, 10:50 PM
Angelika Film Center New York
18 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10012
(800) FAN-DANG
11:15 AM, 12:15 PM, 1:45 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:15 PM, 5:15 PM, 6:45 PM, 7:45 PM, 9:15 PM, 10:15 PM
It’s easier to keep out of the conversation and not take the chance of being misunderstood.