FAQ

Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel) is a biopic about the early life of French fashion designer Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel [1883-1971] (played by Audrey Tautou), starting from the day her father abandoned her and her sister Adrienne at the Aubazine Orphanage in 1893 when she was 10 years old, through the years she lived with wealthy textile heir Etienne Balsan (played by Benoît Poelvoorde), until the death of her lover, wealthy English Captain Arthur 'Boy' Capel (played by Alessandro Nivola), in a car accident in 1919 and the founding of her world-renown fashion label Chanel.

The film is based on a script co-written by French screenwriters Edmonde Charles-Roux, Camille Fontaine, and Anne Fontaine (who also directed the movie). Other films about Coco Chanel include: (1) Chanel Solitaire (1981) (1981), (2) Coco Chanel (2008) (2008), and Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2009) (2009).

The movie is in French with a few short lines spoken in English by Boy Chapel.

Nivola is fluent in Italian but learned to speak French for the movie. His character (Boy Capel) speaks with a slight English accent, being that Capel was an English businessman.

'Little Black Baby' by Scott Joplin.

In her early years as a seamstress, Chanel also sang in a cabaret. It's said that was where she got the name 'Coco,' possibly derived from a song, 'Qui qu'a vu Coco dans le Trocadéro?.' [English: 'Who has seen Coco in the Trocadéro?]' that she performed at a cabaret in Moulins, as shown in the film. The song is about a little dog named Coco who wanders off, hence the singer asking, 'Who has seen Coco...? However, a bit later in the movie, Coco tells Boy that her father used to call her Coco. 'He'd wake me up shouting 'cock-a-doodle-do! It soon became Coco-doodle. And it stuck.' This was most likely a fabrication, as Coco Chanel was known to be very secretive about her humble beginnings, often making up untruths. Another story goes that, during her first years as a cabaret singer, she was named 'Coco' as a shortened form of 'coquette', the French word for a flirtatious woman.

The Trocadéro is an area in Paris, France situated across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. It consists of gardens, fountains, and a palace (the Palais du Trocadéro) that was used for concerts and meetings. The Palais du Trocadéro was demolished in the mid-1930s and replaced with a more modern structure, the Palais de Chaillot .

In the movie, Coco's sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain) informs her of Capel's death and is not seen again. In actuality, Coco had five siblings: Julia-Berthe, Antoinette, Alphonse, Lucien, and Pierre. Adrienne was actually her aunt, who was about the same age as Coco, so she was often taken as Coco's sister. The character Adrienne was contrived for the film and is a mixture of Coco's aunt as well as her older sister Julia. Julia committed suicide in 1913 at the age of 31.

An English Chocolate Labrador Retriever. They are built "heavier" with a more solid body and boxy head than the American counterpart.