Review: 'Coco' biopic looking threadbare

If someone were to make a parody of French biographical films, it might look a great deal like "Coco Before Chanel" -- pompous, incomplete, a woman torn between two lovers, tragic death and many, many cigarettes smoked.

Audrey Tautou, looking too old at the beginning and too young at the end, plays Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in the years before she became a famous designer. Those years play out like a turn-of-the-century orphan novel. With cigarettes.

Coco and her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillian), are abandoned by their father as children, left to a nunnery. When they grow to be comely young lasses, they take up singing in a dance hall, although Coco is none too talented on stage. Off stage, though, she sews like the wind.

Adrienne soon hooks up with a suitor who takes her on as his mistress; Coco seeks out the same in wealthy Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), pretty much forcing her way into his household, enduring his lovemaking and somehow winning him over with her icy resolve.

All the while Coco is making hats and inventing pants outfits for herself, despite the gaudy women's outfits of the time. The austere lines in her clothing obviously reflect her childhood. This is the film's great meaning.

Eventually Coco hooks up with one of Etienne's buddies, the British "Boy" (Alessandro Nivola) and the requisite triangle is formed. It works for a while, then it doesn't. Poor Coco.

Perhaps all students in France are forced to take Coco 101, and this film works as an interesting preamble to her true fame and talent.

But for those who might be interested in Coco's actual achievements or influence, this is one of those movies that just assumes you think its subject is marvelous without offering any real reason to feel that way. Poor Coco.

tlong@detnews.com">tlong@detnews.com (313) 222-8879