Two Limited-release Films Reach Grand Forks

While Fargo is blessed with the Fargo Theatre’s regular eclectic programming of foreign, independent, and artfilms, Grand Forks moviegoers only sporadically get the chance to see limited-release films on the big screen, usually months after their initial release. Such was the case last Friday, when Carmike Cinemas suddenly decided to book two decidedly non-mainstream pictures, apparently to fill in a gap of a few days before the Hollywood Christmas blockbusters take over the multiplexes for the next month or so.

“Boondock Saints II,” sequel to the cult indie film from a decade ago about two Irish brothers on a vendetta to rid the world of evil, also just opened in Fargo and some other area towns, about a month and a half after its national debut. But “Coco avant Chanel” (“Coco Before Chanel”), a French film that premiered in Europe back in April and made it to the U.S. in late September, amazingly opened only in Grand Forks and Bismarck among moviegoing markets in our region. Not only that, but both pictures played in genuine 35mm film prints instead of the digital copies typically run on Carmike screens.

“Coco Before Chanel” was directed and co-written by Anne Fontaine, and stars Audrey Tatou (perhaps best known as the title character in the offbeat “Amelie”) as internationally famous fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971).

Rather than a typical “biopic” covering her life and career, however, the film focuses on the earlier years of her life, leading up to the point where she defied social and cultural convention to found her own groundbreaking and trend-setting company for clothing and perfume.

Fontaine’s film begins with a brief sequence in 1893, when Chanel was a 10-year-old living in an orphanage with her sister. Then it jumps ahead about 10 or 15 years when the sisters are struggling to survive as seamstresses by day and cabaret entertainers by night. A song they performed about a puppy named “Coco” got Gabrielle the nickname that would last her entire life.

As singers, the two attract the attentions of a couple of wealthy patrons, who soon become their lovers. Remembering their troubled childhood, Coco resists falling in love, but is obviously affected by the devotion of playboy Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), and eventually falls for his good friend, British businessman Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola). Through them, she makes contacts with a variety of influential society types, including actress Emilienne d’Alençon (Emanuelle Devos), and learns that she can impress them with her sense for simple elegance.

Both men graciously if a bit uneasily accept their unconventional relationship with Coco, and both grudgingly help her fulfill her desire to do meaningful work rather than merely live comfortably as either a mistress or a wife. Coco’s mood swings and self-denying self-determination, as well as a late-plot traumatic event, give a rather melancholy tone to what might otherwise be a lush period romance.

The film has good performances all around, and lovely cinematography, although it is definitely low-key and leisurely by mainstream Hollywood standards. It is also satisfied to dramatize only Chanel’s pre-fame life and relationships, with only a concluding montage and fashion show to signify her rise to prominence over the next decades. It may not please the average moviegoer, but it’s certainly a welcome alternative to the overstated action and comedy hyped in the preview trailers.

“Coco Before Chanel” will likely be gone from local screens by the time this is published, but it is scheduled for BluRay release on February 16, 2010 from Sony

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