17 October 2009

Révolutionnaire

Coco avant Chanel

Crit

Partly a conventional love story, but in conflict with that is the interesting part, about Gabrielle Chanel's true love, independence. In this telling, Chanel (played by Audrey Tautou, frowning more than in her entire career heretofore) begins with a vision not of making black the new black but simply of doing something on her own, out from under the masculine thumb. Fashion is merely the long-gestated child of her strictly personal dissatisfaction with the frou-frou mode. In hackier hands a drama would have been spun from her affinity for wearing men's clothing and her stubborn resistance against amour, and then the one true (and doomed--yes, that's a spoiler, but no less subtle than we get onscreen) love who finally does come along would have been her hetero savior--thank god the filmmakers don't really care about the battle of the sexualities. A coda in which she stages a fashion show, applauded now as a legend, is the only note false to the film and to the title.

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