Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou stars in the title role of Anne Fontaine's biopic of the hugely influential French fashion designer Coco Chanel. Fontaine begins her telling of Gabrielle Chanel's life at the moment she and her sister Adrienne are dropped off, aged around 12 and following their mother's death, at a convent-run orphanage; she continues tracing the Chanel story, as suggested by the title, through to the 1920s, just before Coco becomes the fashion phenomenon she is remembered as today. After their time at the orphanage, the sisters find themselves struggling to make their name as entertainers in a local music hall, where Gabrielle picks up her nickname, Coco. It's also at the music hall that Coco and Adrienne meet the men who will enable them to climb society's rungs, though Coco's general attitude to those around her makes her route more circuitous than her sister's.