Audrey Tautou: Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou is out to capture the hearts of movie goers, the way the woman she is portraying on the big screen captured the hearts of those in the fashion industry. Coco Before Chanel is the title of the Cesar Award winner’s latest project. In this period piece we see young Gabrielle (Chanel’s given name) abandoned at and dropped off at an orphanage by her father shortly after her mother has died. It is there she will spend the remainder of her youth and where she and her sister learned to sew. We see the early days of her adulthood as a struggling seamstress and songstress, working two jobs and looking for fame. Her life changes when she meets a rich and powerful man and becomes his mistress. It is at his chateau that Chanel begins her career, making hats for his other “friends” as well as taking his clothes and turning them in to her own. Tautou is wonderful in this film directed by Anne Fontaine. The movie captures the lush French countryside and shows us all too clearly the double-standard which Chanel had to overcome in order to become a successful business woman in her own right.