Shirley MacLaine helps Lifetime channel Coco Chanel
COCO CHANEL Saturday at 9 p.m., Lifetime
Shirley MacLaine will get most of the attention for playing fashion legend Coco Chanel in this smart-looking and solidly crafted new Lifetime biopic premiering Saturday night.
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And that’s fair. MacLaine has her own legend, and in “Coco Chanel,” she adeptly handles a wider and subtler character than many of the charming, slightly off-center old dames she has played in recent years.
But for some of us, the movie kicks into another gear when MacLaine’s doyenne Coco starts to reminisce about her youth and where it all started.
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That brings on the young Coco, then called Gabrielle and played here by Barbora Bobulova.
Bobulova glows with some of the same aura as Juliette Binoche, which means some of us will ask no further questions, but simply follow her to the end of the Earth.
Even better, she doesn’t need our blind adulation. As an actress, she’s a match for MacLaine, and together they give Coco a seamless blend of winsome charm and solid steel.
By this portrayal, Chanel starts as a well-mannered, willful, slightly mischievous girl who is slowly hardened into a driven fashion entrepreneur by the cruelty of one lover and the loss of another.
This requires both actresses to project the sensitivity that underlies artistic creativity, then temper it with the intensity that enabled Chanel to triumph in a world where women were considered little more than fashion accessories themselves.
Both MacLaine and Bobulova navigate this tricky path with ease, yet never allow it to feel like a victory without scars.
There is a sadness about Chanel that may surprise those who know only her creations – not to mention those who expect all Lifetime movies to end with untroubled rainbows.
MacLaine’s Chanel shares some traits with the Meryl Streep character in “The Devil Wears Prada,” the recent standard by which queens of the fashion world are measured.
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But MacLaine’s Coco is subtler and less imperious, suggesting she is more sure of herself – a trait that serves her well when her “comeback” collection in 1954 is rejected by a fashion world that thinks she has fallen out of touch.
Bobulova’s younger Coco spends less time talking fashion and more time sorting through romance with the rich cad Etienne Balsan (Sagamore Stevenin) and the tragic Boy Capel (Olivier Sitruk).
Still, the Bobulova Chanel gets the legend under way, by designing hats and picking the fragrance that would become Chanel No. 5.
It is left to MacLaine to explain the famed Little Black Dress, which she created while mourning Capel, as well as the whole Chanel philosophy of considering what women are looking for when they get dressed.
It’s a gentle lesson from a woman who took some hard slaps. While her story isn’t always sweet and the filmmakers add a few melodramatic flourishes, we come away with a better appreciation for the price of success in the glamour game.
