Coco Before Chanel (PG-13) (105 min.) — Famed for liberating women's fashion from crunching corsets and comical frills, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel is more interesting as a movie character during her younger, precelebrity years than the aged maven Katharine Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine played. Especially when portrayed by Audrey Tautou (Amélie), possessing the kind of face that cameras must have been invented for.
The Coco of Anne Fontaine's movie is ambitious nearly to a fault, an aspiring seamstress playing cabaret flirt during off hours for wealthy men, in order to rise from poverty to esteemed status in Belle Époche France. Yet Tautou never makes her appear whorish or anything less than opportunistic in a most delightful way. She's a Jane Austen hero with carnal gumption, a crafty paramour who'd fascinate even if her future wouldn't be so successful.
Coco Before Chanel begins in 1893 with Coco and her sister dumped at an orphanage and quickly ages her to Parisian chanteuse, drawing lascivious glances from rich men and returning them with irresistible indifference. One patron, the dumpy race horse millionaire Étienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), pursues Coco out of desperation she recognizes and exploits, moving into his mansion estate, hidden from wealthy friends who would disapprove.
From the shadows, Coco views their fashion with bemused disapproval; hats resembling meringues, waists cinched like one of Étienne's steeds, unable to move or sit comfortably. In one of several scenes of inspiration, Coco slices one of Étienne's suits, stitching it into the first of her mannish fashions to make a startling entrance. Fontaine expertly makes her eyes into ours, seeing the possibility of colors and fabrics around her.
The movie loses punch when Coco's path to fashion history is interrupted by something like a love triangle. Étienne's English friend Arthur "Boy" Capel (bland but handsome Alessandro Nivola) becomes his rival for Coco's affection, although both seem more possessive than in love. Boy provides other sartorial and eventually tragic inspiration for Coco but hardly enough to justify his screen time.
Fontaine's film ends around 1915 when Coco is just beginning to leave her mark in an era of male dominance, freeing women from pastry fashions. Yet, in a dead end finale at odds with everything before it, we see older Coco surveying a procession of models in what passes as modern haute couture. They don't appear any more liberated or comfortable than the socialites Coco freed.
All Tautou does in that scene is smile and it's almost enough to make it work. Tautou's knack for concealing and revealing her character's thoughts — glances at apparel and fabrics speak volumes — make Coco Before Chanel more involving than it probably deserves to be. Coco had a reputation for making up stories about her past whenever it benefited her, an improvised caginess Tautou conveys even without speaking. You can miss a few subtitles, distracted by that lovely face. B+
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