COCO BEFORE CHANEL / MY REVIEW
This Parisian movie poster was banned in Paris because Tautou was pictured smoking a cigarette.
Audrey Tautou's fierce performance as Coco Chanel is a must see tour de force for two reasons ~ she fully captures an ambitious emotionally damaged woman who uses love to eventually claim her gift and, in the process, illuminates the true intent of love: Allen L Roland
I went to see this film with no expectations but was more than pleasantly surprised. The film, as the title suggests, depicts the early life of a woman who probably became the single most important figure in 20th century fashion ~ but writer and director Anne Fontaine artfully creates a touching story within that story that stands by itself as a testament to the will and courage of the truly gifted among us.
All of us are emotionally damaged in childhood, as Coco most certainly was as an orphaned young child, but not all of us have the courage and will to rise above that carnage and capture our original joy, intention and purpose.
Fontaine, perhaps unconsciously, captures that journey which almost always coincides with the heart's journey ~ for each of Coco's love relationships end up helping and eventually support her deep unfolding desire to make a statement in the world of fashion.
There is a lesson here ~ for the true path of the heart should always eventually lead to the full and honest expression of yourself and your gift ~ as Coco's most certainly does.
A.O Scott, N.Y. Times, calls the film " An unusually vivid and convincing account of the historical past, composed in the present sense. Though its moods and methods are different, Coco before Chanel shares with Jane Campion's Bright Star a fascination, at once intense and dispassionate, with the lives of women in earlier centuries...Coco and Fanny Brawne, the heroine of Ms. Campion's film, are not victims of oppression or paragons of resistance but rather individuals, made not of ideology or wishful thinking but of flesh and blood."
And that is precisely my point in this review, for Tautou's Coco is all flesh and blood ~ playful and difficult, chain-smoking and sarcastic, trusting and wary, vulnerable and hard but underneath it all ticks a burning ambition and a song to sing.
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/11/09.html
Freelance Online columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )
