To most people she is just the name on very expensive frocks, but director Anne Fontaine wants us to see the Coco beneath the Chanel, the poor seamstress and wannabe cabaret artist who overcame social status to conquer the fashion world.

That she did this by practising her craft on the clothes of rich benefactor Balsan (Poelvoorde), while crashing at his rambling country estate, colours Coco's contempt for the pampered aristos cavorting into the night, but Fontaine is too in awe of her subject for much critical unstitching.

The real Chanel was notorious for her apocryphal stories, so any biopic isn't going to cover half the truth.  But Fontaine's decision to focus on a pre-fame Coco, duelling with the ambiguous Balsan while falling head over well-cut hem for English businessman Capel (Nivola), firmly places her movie in the soft centre section of the foreign film chocolate box.

So we have chocolate box soap (Coco's battles with the boorish Balsan, befriending a wealthy actress, coy suggestions of lesbianism), chocolate box sex (camera tracking over to Tautou and Nivola in passionate head-and-shoulder clinch, before hasty fade), and chocolate box tragedy (a late in the day accident almost comically signposted).

A cooler-headed director was needed to tackle the prickly subject, whose minimalist designs cry out for more detached treatment.  And while Tautou is committed to doing the icon justice, she comes across as a grumpy Amelie, even if her natural luminescence awards the movie another star.  

But, she is not the powerhouse that Marion Cotillard was in La Vie En Rose, and won't be sweeping the award shows.

However, Fontaine has learnt her lesson from that earlier biopic.  Whereas La Vie En Rose awkwardly skipped World War 2, Coco Before Chanel gets out early, dodging that pesky affair with a Nazi officer and accusations of war crimes.

Pretty then, but as decoratively superficial as those society hats Chanel loathed.

Rob Daniel