Coco Before Chanel

Coco Before Chanel is not a great film, but it is a good one...the joy between Coco and Boy truly dominates the screen and gets your attention.

The thread connecting the ambitious girl to the acclaimed woman is enough to make us wish for a sequel titled Chanel No. 2.

The film is unfailingly funny.

Coco Before Chanel only starts to get interesting when she asserts her creative and financial freedom -- and that's right when the movie's about to end.

We are used to seeing Tautou play the sweetheart. Here, she's anything but. Constantly smoking, dour, unsmiling, critical, she plays a character difficult to warm to but fascinating to watch.

Anne Fontaine's lavish biopic goes back to Chanel's early years to show how, before she invented the century - by revolutionising fashion - she first invented herself.

In the end, Coco Before Chanel's woman-before-the-mogul biography is more respectable than rousing, an enlightening but hardly ground-moving tribute to a fashion modernist.

Like Coco's designs, Coco Before Chanel won't appeal to everyone, but for those who fall under it's charms it will prove to be a near-perfect fit.

A trifle long perhaps, but certainly a delight.