The scene is an orphanage in late nineteenth century France, a place where children’s dreams are stifled and crushed. Even here, the eyes of a perceptive child gaze with wonder at the funereal habits of nuns.

So, Gabrielle Chanel, in Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel, comes across her first taste of clothing before it becomes ‘fashion’. In time, she moves on to the cabaret scene with her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillain), performing as a double-act in provincial cafes. This is not a film that seeks to promote the independence of the female subject. Gabrielle and Adrienne see older men salivate over flesh. They, in turn, seek to net a wealthy quarry, or at least the odd glass of champagne.

One catch is the wealthy, womanizing racehorse owner Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde). A life as companion and entertainer awaits, but it comes with its social restraints and failings. ‘Coco’, a nickname Chanel assumes for her cabaret song, can only appear at some functions and not others. She refuses to remain a conventional ‘kept’ woman. The creative juices start stirring.

Audrey Tautou is deliciously superb, carrying a film that might have limped through. She depicts Chanel with Promethean power, savaging her conservative companions and dresses with equal skill. Her milk white sensuality is drawn out by Fontaine with grace, and yet one is aware of the intensely androgynous nature of the figure. Perhaps the feminist writer Camille Paglia is right: great women in history tend to be androgynous.

Chanel’s loves are brought to the screen with skill. The ménage à trois between Chanel, Balsan and the self-made Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel (Alessandro Nivola), who found her austere improvisations irresistible, is rendered with tenderness. The scenes are beautiful, stunning depictions of the countryside where debauchery and delights assume divine proportions.

Fontaine is astute enough to spare her audience any long examinations in fashion. It is sufficient to see Chanel as a revolutionary in jodhpurs and austere clothing, the genesis of an idea. The fashions of the day are critiqued as absurd, foolish and impractical. With the financial backing of Balsan, Capel and Emilienne d’Alençon (Emmanuelle Devos), a French stage personality who first popularized Chanel’s designs, Chanel has the means to invent the world of fashion.

The film stays clear of the darker Chanel, one who had, as the film critic David Gritten pointed out (Telegraph, Jul 30), ‘amiable relations with the Third Reich.’ This is the usual criticism leveled against French heroines who were allegedly as pure as the driven slush, forming liaisons with German officers. The same criticism might have been leveled at the depiction of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. Perhaps the finest retort to this kind of thing came from the actress Arletty, who was quite happy involving herself with the occupying forces. ‘My heart is French, but my body is international.’

In focusing on the earlier Chanel, the director avoids the darker, collaborative moments of Vichy. We can stay in the realm of the before. Instead, the suffering heroine is left to endure the absence of marriage and the triumph of her elegant art.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com