Movie · 2009 · Drama, History · 1h 50m · PG-13 · French
Curator score: 3.4/10 (73K ratings)
Before she was France's famous mademoiselle…
Overview
Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.4/10
IMDb: 6.6/10
Letterboxd: 3.21/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 63%
Metacritic: 65
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Anne Fontaine
Production
Haut et Court, Ciné-@, France 2 Cinéma, SCOPE Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment France
Cast
Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, Emmanuelle Devos, Régis Royer, Étienne Bartholomeus, Yan Duffas, Fabien Béhar, Roch Leibovici, Jean-Yves Chatelais, Pierre Diot, Vincent Nemeth, Bruno Abraham-Kremer, Lisa Cohen, Inès Bessalem, Marie-Bénédicte Roy, Émilie Gavois-Kahn, Fanny Deblock, Claude Brécourt
Curator Review
Verdict
An elegant, watchable period biopic with a strong lead performance and polished production design, but it often feels more interested in the men around Chanel than in her creative interior life. If you want a glossy costume drama about ambition and social ascent, it works; if you want a fuller portrait of Chanel the designer and icon, it’s frustratingly thin.
Best for
viewers who enjoy refined period dramas
fans of fashion history and costume design
audiences who like restrained biographical films
people drawn to Audrey Tautou’s screen presence
Skip if
you want a deeply feminist or psychologically rich biopic
you’re looking for a detailed account of Chanel’s design breakthroughs
you’re put off by stories centered on romantic entanglements
you need a film that fully grapples with its subject’s moral legacy
Overview
Coco Before Chanel is a handsome, controlled biopic that traces Gabrielle Chanel’s rise from precarious beginnings to the threshold of fashion history. Anne Fontaine stages the film with a cool, polished surface, and Audrey Tautou gives Coco a watchful, self-possessed energy that keeps the film moving even when the script narrows its focus.
Worth noting
The problem is that the movie often treats Chanel less as a creative force than as an object moving through male attention and social opportunity. That choice gives the film a conventional romantic-drama shape, but it also blunts the sense of invention that should make the story electric.
Bottom line
What remains is a tasteful, occasionally absorbing portrait of class mobility, style, and self-invention. It’s strongest as atmosphere and performance piece, weaker as a definitive character study, and it leaves you wishing for a sharper, more daring film about the woman behind the legend.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Tatiana Sofia🧼 (2.5★) · 378 likes
How to make a film about a woman:
- first, and this is mandatory, focus on the men on her life and forget complety to add deepness and truth into the female character
- Second, well, if you have already talked about men you don't have to do anything more
And then voilá!
Ingrid Atkinson (1.5★) · 269 likes
So are we just going to forget that Coco Chanel was a nazi or ?
chris (2★) · 263 likes
first hour of the movie: complete detail about her sex life
last 10 minutes: literally everything else about her life i guess
Angelina (1★) · 121 likes
Ugh. This movie is infuriating!!!
It is called "Coco before Chanel" NOT "The men of Coco". It literally jumped from Coco making hats to her having a whole ass collection. Not even a little bit on how she started! But what I hate the most is that they made it seem like Gabrielle had no passion for fashion. They made it look like she just had an eye/talent for fashion but she didn't really care. How do you even manage to do such a thing!!! UUUUGH
Asia the Invincible (3★) · 108 likes
A solid Audrey Tautou can't really make up for the fact that the film as a whole is more concerned with Coco's men than with her. Wasted potential, really.