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88The naturalism of Anne Fontaine's film would be at home in a novel by Dreiser. Her star Audrey Tautou, who could make lovability into a career, avoids any effort to make Coco Chanel nice, or soft, or particularly sympathetic.
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83I wish Fontaine would follow up with a sequel: "Coco After Chanel." Tautou's performance cries out for a second act.
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80Anne Fontaine's biopic transforms the designer's early life into highbrow guilty-pleasure gold.
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80A superior filmed biography that brings intelligence, restraint and style to what could have been a more standard treatment.
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80Coco is played by Audrey Tautou, and she's phenomenal--self-contained, tightly focused, sparing with her smiles, miserly with her joy, often guarded to the point of severity, yet giving off a grave radiance at every moment she's in front of the camera.
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80This refreshing alternative to the usual potted biopic provides an absorbing look at a singular, steely determination as it was forged and annealed, long before it made itself known to the world.
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75Through Tautou's performance, Coco Before Chanel reveals the formation of an artist.
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75Maybe it's just the subtitles, but it would seem that Fontaine has a keener eye for the elements that made Chanel's style than she has an ear for dialogue. But she gets a splendid performance from Tautou.
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75Coco Chanel is not the most lovable of heroines, but it's a strength of the film that director Anne Fontaine allows Tautou to make Coco as cold and ungiving as she does.
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75Not an expansive biopic but a fascinating snapshot of a pivotal chapter for Chanel, her formative fashionista years.
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75This is the story of the diminutive Coco before she became the fashionable Chanel – in other words, the whole movie is one long first act.
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75Tautou is a fascinating, unsmiling, petite presence with a severe brow and an androgynous appeal, so much so that I wish Alessandro Nivola (Junebug) were a more robust beau as Arthur ''Boy'' Capel, the love of Chanel's life.
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Spectacle, a love triangle, heritage settings, bravura acting, witty dialogue, a bittersweet finale: There's something for everyone in Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel.
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70A hard luck, true life fairy tale story told with poignant humility, embellished with solid acting and determined direction.
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70Surprisingly intimate and nuanced.
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70The blossoming of her ambition, as much as her love life, drives the story forward, and turns Coco Before Chanel into a costume drama worthy of the name.
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70The movie is most fascinating when it shows how Chanel communicated her enlightened sense of womanhood through her innovative designs, which in turn helped women feel differently about themselves.
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67Tautou is, as ever, radiant and deep and affecting, but a film about such an extraordinary personage as Chanel shouldn't feel so ordinary and wan.
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63I could have watched this woman rip a piece fabric and turn it into a dress all day. I haven't seen a lot of that. I have seen movies about a woman caught between two men, as Chanel is here.
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63Technically, it's superbly made; dramatically, it fails to achieve escape velocity.
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63The thread connecting the ambitious girl to the acclaimed woman is enough to make us wish for a sequel titled "Chanel No. 2."
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60There are a select few artists who can take the same materials used by everyone else and create a masterpiece. Coco Chanel was one of them. Director Anne Fontaine is not.
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60More a snapshot of a moment than conventional biography, and while less complex than it might want to be, still a quietly thoughtful look at one of the 20th century's most influential characters.
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60More sentimental than chic, Gallic biopic Coco Before Chanel nonetheless knits a convincing portrait of the designer's journey from her humble beginnings as a provincial seamstress to the halls of Parisian haute couture.
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50A better title: "Coco Before She Was Interesting."
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50It's a perfectly nice period piece and biographical backgrounder, but the film feels as though it's a meal of tasty side dishes that lacks a main course.
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50The Coco of Fontaine's project--which she co-wrote with her sister, Camille, freely adapting Edmonde Charles-Roux's book L'Irrégulière: ou, Mon itinéraire Chanel--can be described as courtesan before couturiere.
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50Too much of the film feels like one of Balsan's house parties: undriven, indulgent, quite at ease.
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50There are indications scattered throughout Coco Before Chanel of a major designer quietly and persistently honing her craft, but most of the film could exist without the Chanel name and still smell like the same perfume.
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38The movie is neither an affecting romance (Coco even considers marrying Balsan because "I'd achieve social status") nor an inspiring success story. Chanel sold herself to one guy, happened to get customers through him, and took a start-up loan from another lover.
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