Coco Before Chanel (2009)
Directed by Anne Fontaine
Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
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What critics compared Coco Before Chanel to
I don’t recall such a thrilling cinematic portrayal of couture since 2009’s Coco Before Chanel.
Wrong! “Two Mothers” may be based on a novel by Doris Lessing and adapted to the screen by director Anne Fontaine (“Coco Before Chanel”) and prestige hack Christopher Hampton, with Naomi Watts and Robin Wright in the lead roles, but it’s an exceedingly silly, sun-baked sex movie, the kind of import that adds just enough brains to its genitals to get into U.S. arthouses.
Director Fontaine ("Coco Before Chanel"), making her English-language film debut here, shows something of a tin ear for dialogue, allowing the likes of this: Roz: What have we done?
Perhaps it takes a Gallic sensibility to suggest that this unconventional design for living could be a viable one, and there are moments when Fontaine (“ Coco Before Chanel ”), a French director making her English-language debut, seems prepared to tap into the material’s vulgar comic potential.
"Dangerous Liaisons'" screenwriter Christopher Hampton, who collaborated with the writer-director on 2009's "Coco Before Chanel," worked with her to adapt the complex sexual alliances Lessing toys with.
The director is Anne Fontaine, perhaps best known for 2009's attractive but tedious " Coco Before Chanel ."
While it sounds like the stuff of turgid melodrama, director Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel) does a good job of making things appear organic and matter of fact.