Critic Reviews

The naturalism of Anne Fontaine's film would be at home in a novel by Dreiser. Her star Audrey Tautou, who could make lovability into a career, avoids any effort to make Coco Chanel nice, or soft, or particularly sympathetic.

I wish Fontaine would follow up with a sequel: "Coco After Chanel." Tautou's performance cries out for a second act.

Anne Fontaine’s biopic transforms the designer’s early life into highbrow guilty-pleasure gold.

Coco is played by Audrey Tautou, and she's phenomenal--self-contained, tightly focused, sparing with her smiles, miserly with her joy, often guarded to the point of severity, yet giving off a grave radiance at every moment she's in front of the camera.

A superior filmed biography that brings intelligence, restraint and style to what could have been a more standard treatment.

This refreshing alternative to the usual potted biopic provides an absorbing look at a singular, steely determination as it was forged and annealed, long before it made itself known to the world.

Tautou is a fascinating, unsmiling, petite presence with a severe brow and an androgynous appeal, so much so that I wish Alessandro Nivola (Junebug) were a more robust beau as Arthur ''Boy'' Capel, the love of Chanel's life.

Not an expansive biopic but a fascinating snapshot of a pivotal chapter for Chanel, her formative fashionista years.

This is the story of the diminutive Coco before she became the fashionable Chanel – in other words, the whole movie is one long first act.

Coco Chanel is not the most lovable of heroines, but it's a strength of the film that director Anne Fontaine allows Tautou to make Coco as cold and ungiving as she does.