Coco Before Chanel

Starring: Audrey Tautou, Alessandro Nivola, Benoit Poelvoorde
Directed by: Anne Fontaine (“The Girl from Monaco”)
Written by: Anne Fontaine (“The Girl from Monaco”) and Camille Fontaine (“Man of the Crowds”)

Whether you’re a stylish fashionista or someone who doesn’t know the difference between box pleats and inverted pleats (scoff), the biopic “Coco Before Chanel,” based on the life of fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel before she became an iconic brand name, is a solid piece of work. It’s no haute couture dress, but it’s not a hand-me-down either.

Based on the book by former editor of French Vogue Edmode Charles-Roux, “Coco Before Chanel” begins in 1893 when young Gabrielle’s father boards her and her sister Adrienne at an orphanage. The two sisters grow up side by side and as they get older take on different ways of making money including sewing petticoats and singing at a local cabaret (she earns her nickname after performing a song about a dog named Coco).

Although Coco and Adrienne have short-term plans for their singing careers, Adrienne moves away with a baron she meets and leaves her sister to fend for herself. Without much thought, Coco packs her bags and moves to Paris to visit Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), a wealthy friend who takes her into his mansion and ignores the fact that she overstays her welcome after a few weeks.

While she has grown to love the finer things in life, it is in Etienne’s presence where Coco finds her true passion. She starts off by making hats before she popularizes trousers and other men’s wear for women. The last thing an extremely independent woman like Coco would wear is something of high society like a corset. She is a free spirit and not someone who would let anything or anyone hold her down. At first she is given strange glances from other women who don’t understand why she refuses to wear hats adorned with feathers or shoes with heels, but soon enough her style catches on.

As the straight-forward biopic continues, so does the elegance and grace of Tautou, who is her generation’s Audrey Hepburn. While Poelvoorde and actor Alessandro Nivola (he plays Coco’s true love) give quality performances, it’s Tautou who steals most of the show dressed in drab grays and blacks.

There just something so delicate about Tautou that stands out in a film like “Chanel.” It might not have all the charming aspects of other Tautou films like “Amelie” or “Priceless,” but “Chanel,” a story about a woman who strays from the stuffiness of society to make her own path to become a great designer, is a sophisticated and empowering rags-to-riches tale.

The Eye

Starring: Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey
Directed by: David Moreau (“Ills”) and Xavier Palud (“Ills”)
Written by: Sebastian Gutierrez (“Snakes on a Plane”)

If there’s anything that Hollywood can currently do without (other than striking writers), it’s more Japanese and Chinese horror film remakes. Taking a page from “The Grudge,” “The Ring,” and both their unneeded sequels, “The Eye,” a modernized version of the Hong-Kong film “Jian Gui,” delivers a substandard plot and disguises it with unoriginal visual effects and cheap scare tactics.

The film follows Sydney Wells (Alba), a blind violin player who undergoes surgery to replace her eyes, which were damaged while playing with fireworks when she was a little girl. Although the transplant is a success from a medical standpoint, Sydney becomes terrorized by images she begins to see both in her dreams and while awake.

Not only are ghosts appearing and reappearing right in front of her (there’s a quick reference to “The Sixth Sense” in the middle of the film although I’m not too sure it was intentional), Sydney is also waking up every morning at 1:06 a.m. Gasp, I guess. Aren’t these delusional internal clocks getting a bit worn out in the horror genre?

Turning to eye specialist Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), who is supposed to help her retrain her corneas, Sydney becomes increasingly curious as to whose eyes she has inherited and what secrets this person hid away before dying. In a superfluous role, Parker Posey plays Sydney’s sister Helen and does nothing for the picture except lend her name for the credits. There is another story behind the relationship of the two women (Helen seems to feel guilty around her sibling possibly because she blames herself for the childhood accident?), but French directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud never bother to explain.

Written by screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez (“Gothika,” “Snakes on a Plane”), “The Eye” has some interesting ideas embedded deep inside the lankiness of its actual storyline. Instead of building on its strengths, Gutierrez, along with Moreau and Palud, downplay Sydney’s physical condition and focus more on her mental instability, which comes to us in heavy doses of dream sequences and cliché editing. It would have been much more interesting to watch Sydney struggle with her new vision before inundating us with the dead.

Mark another missed opportunity for Alba. She has yet to prove that she is more than a pretty face in the industry. Until she grabs hold of a role that will give her something with substance to work with, her claim to fame just might be the “100 Hot Babes Lists” she always manages to top.