Not to be confused with Audrey Tautou’s Coco Avant Chanel, Coco Chanel was broadcast by Lifetime Television. Starring as the older Coco was Shirley MacLaine. Barbora Bobulová starred as the younger Coco.
The story of the legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel started with Coco reminiscing her past as she was coming under pressure from her manager Marc Bouchier to sell her business and go into retirement. Through a series of flashbacks, Coco’s past was revealed to the audience. From her time when she was left behind by her father with her sister, her acquaintance to Étienne Balsan which later led to the introduction to Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, and throughout her early rise of her fashion empire. This movie focused on the romantic relationship between Coco and Boy Capel, which ended in Capel’s death in an automobile accident (Hey, this is no spoiler because it is a historical fact).
Although the story was great, the choice of language was, I believe, to be a bad move. It is cleary evident that the dialogues became awkward whenever the scenes set in France came up. I believe that Barbora did an awesome performance here and would have been a lot better if the dialogues were in French. McLaine did an equally great performance too, but unfortunately the dialogues seemed awkward when spoken in English. I saw some clips on Youtube about interviews with Coco during her later years, and they were in French, not English. This made the realism factor as the weakness of this movie. The flaw was not in the acting, but in the chosen language. Other than this, Coco Chanel is an good movie.
The cast did well, including Olivier Sitruk who played as Boy Capel, and also Valentina Lodovini as Adrienne. Still, the spotlight should be for Barbora and Shirley. Both did very well. Shirley MacLaine was nominated for Best Actress in Golden Globe Awards, also as the Outstanding Female Actor in Screen Actors Guild award, also in Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie in the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards.
For final rating, I give it a 7.5. The set was great, the acting was also great, the story was interesting and enjoyable, but the killing factor was the choice of language (it reminds me of Valkyrie).
Credits:
Directed by Christian Duguay
Written by Ron Hutchinson, Enrico Medioli, and Lea Tafuri
Starring: Shirley MacLaine, Barbora Bobulová, Olivier Sitruk, Valentina Lodovini, and Malcolm McDowell
Broadcast year: 2008
IMDB Rating: 6.9
