“Now, I want to see the rest of it,” my
co-worker Emma said to me as we walked out of a screening of “Coco Avant Chanel,” which has opened in theaters in France but hits theaters in the rest of world this July. I felt the same way. The movie is filled with languid,
beautifully shot scenes intensified by sublime Karl Lagerfeld-supervised
costumes and Audrey Tautou’s intense transformation into Coco. And yet, it left me
wanting to know more about a woman who clearly defied the social conventions of
her time in such a major way. Coco was an orphan who juggled two aristocratic
lovers (mostly refusing to sleep with one, and resigning herself to being the
mistress of the married other) in order to secure a roof over her head, a
career, personal wealth, and ultimately her “freedom.” She often dressed in men’s clothing and persuaded
women obsessed with feathers and tight corsets to drop the frills. It’s strong
pre-feminist stuff. But the film seems to gloss over the cultural boundaries
she pushed as an artist and careerist in favor of the love story, which is a
moving one nonetheless.
