Coco before Chanel (2009)

This quiet biopic about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel before she got famous is pleasant enough to watch but ultimately forgettable once you walk out of the theater.

It’s not that the acting or the plot is lackluster. On the contrary, it is quite engaging to see how Chanel goes from rags to riches by sheer force of will. Audrey Tautou artfully shows us just what kind of character is needed in order for Chanel to succeed, especially in light of the considerable obstacles with which an orphaned woman in turn of the century France was faced.

I think for me the problem was that the film did have some emotional content, showing Chanel in complicated romantic situations with a variety of men, but that somehow at the end of the day we could still only look on Chanel’s story from the outside. It was as though we had been invited to look through a window at her life, but never quite got invited inside to join in.

Perhaps this keeping the audience at arm’s length was the point; Chanel is repeatedly characterized as independent to the degree of aloofness throughout the film. However, this coldness had the effect of creating a certain degree of indifference in me toward Chanel—at the end of the film I didn’t really feel anything at all.