“もし翼を持たずに生まれてきたのなら、 翼を生やすためにどんなことでもしなさい”
母親を亡くし、父親に見捨てられたガブリエル・シャネルは、姉と共に田舎の孤児院で少女時代を過ごす。やがて、仕立屋でお針子仕事をする傍ら、姉と共にキャバレーで歌を歌い、つましく生計を立てていく。また、その時の持ち歌から“ココ”の愛称で呼ばれ、本格的に歌手を志すようになるガブリエル。そんな彼女はある日、エティエンヌという裕福な将校と出会う。愛人関係となった彼の支援で歌手になる夢も膨らみ、上流階級の社交界も知るガブリエル。ところが、歌手の夢は潰え、愛人に留まるだけのエティエンヌとの生活も次第に陰りが見え始める。しかし、この時ガブリエルには裁縫の独創的で類い希な才能が芽生えていた。そうした中、本当の彼女を理解するイギリス人の実業家ボーイ・カペルが現われ、相思相愛となるのだが…。
映画化された原作や関連書籍を読んで、映像との違いや独自の世界観を楽しみましょう。
Audrey Tautou is actually quite impressive here as the legendary French designer, but the rest of this rather blandly photographed melodrama is really more about her love life than her career. She's born Gabrielle and having left the orphanage in which she was abandoned with sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain), takes a job as a seamstress and supplements that with some cabaret work. Clearly she has skill - at both, but it's her charms at the latter that interest the wealthy Baron Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde). His name and association opens many doors for this aspiring woman but she tends to look upon him more, to his increasing chagrin, like a brother as she takes a shine to visiting British coal millionaire Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola) who agrees to fund her first millinery enterprise. Like so many of these rags-to-riches biopics, we spend way too long on the childhood and family dynamic before almost accidentally ending up at the how she got her break stuff. We hardly build at all on just how she became the woman she was. Those elements are sparingly portrayed and rushed leaving us with large parts of this drama delivering more of a Merchant Ivory style love triangle, peppered with some "House of Eliot" that has more of the soap than the salon to it. That said, Tautou rarely puts a foot wrong and does go some way to convince - despite the over scripting and underwhelming screenplay, and there's an hint of chemistry with Nivola too. It's fine, but sadly - nothing more, and it does little justice to Chanel as a woman or a brand.
