Shirley MacLaine is an improbable Chanel. Granted she has the gravelly voice and is both eccentric and cantankerous, but somehow I could never really believe that she embodied the elegant Coco Chanel (especially with her heavy American accent). Obviously, that is just my opinion because Shirley MacLaine received a Golden Globe nomination for this role but I was thankful that her role in the movie was relatively small.
Told in a series of flashbacks, this movie plays loose and fast with the story of Chanel's life. If you have read a great deal about Chanel, you may find this disconcerting, as I did. For example, there is a scene where Chanel orders a young male groom to drop his jodhpurs so that she can wear them riding instead of the long and cumbersome woman's riding habit. I also thought the costumes were somewhat weak, particularly when it came to a bland, ill-fitting sweater that the young Chanel, played by Barbora Bobulova, wears repeatedly in numerous scenes early in her adult life.
In spite of its many flaws, the movie is amusing and a must-see for die-hard Chanel fans, if only to allow comparison with the many other movies about Chanel's life. If any of my readers would like my dvd, please leave me a comment including your score on the Coco Questionnaire and I'll do another giveaway draw at the end of the week. This giveaway is limited to readers from Canada and the USA.
Coco Chanel
Directed by: Christian Duguay
Length of Movie: 139 Minutes
Rating: 14A
2008
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