Audrey Tatou brings a boyish charm to her role as a young Coco Chanel

Cast: Audrey Tatou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain
Director/Screenwriter: Anne Fontaine

Coco Before Chanel, as you might guess, chronicles legendary designer Coco Chanel’s life before she found fashion. The film opens with a small Coco (Lisa Cohen) waiting in vain for her father at the orphanage where she lives, as she does every Sunday. Having grown up with just a sister to love/love her, we then see Coco as a young woman (Tatou), so very affected by her parents’ ignorance, cold-hearted, afraid and skeptical of love, constantly dreaming of a much richer life.

One night while singing to drunken soldiers in a local pub, an evening job she isn’t great at pulling off, Coco stumbles across Étienne Balsan (Poelvoorde), who takes a fancy to her despite her ragged clothes and lack of manners and money. Sensing a route to the high life she always dreamed of, she allows Balsan to be a complete pig towards her and she, without invitation, sets up home in his country manor, determined that she will stay there and learn how to become one who rides horses, has high tea and takes afternoon strolls. Unfortunately for her, Balsan is quick to intervene whenever she tries to do so, belittling her worth at every available opportunity – for example, whenever he has guests, she is to stay upstairs or in the maid’s kitchen and not make a sound.

In the relationship between Balsan and Coco, Fontaine has carefully and perfectly captured the real Coco’s stubbornness and selfishness in a way that does not disrespect or demean the designer. Instead it sets up delightfully funny moments in an already very intriguing story. But when Coco is introduced to Arthur “Boy” Capel, a handsome Englishman with no shame to be seen with a girl that dresses like a boy, we see a much more vulnerable side to the character; her unwillingness to love is captured perfectly in Tatou’s very visual emotional frustration.

She was cute and quirky in Amélie and made Tom Hanks bearable in the  Da Vinci Code. She’s one of the most successful French actresses since Bridget Bardot and it’s not because she wants to show her breasts at every available opportunity. The effortlessly spellbinding Audrey Tatou is the perfect choice to play Coco Chanel in this biopic about the fashion designer’s early life, and she does so with character and grace.

Coco Before Chanel is in cinemas 31st July via Optimum Releasing

By Cathy Reay