Being the highly cultured swine that I am, immersing myself regularly in literary classics such as Twilight, Harry Potter and Jordan’s autobiography. It’s then only natural to assume I often can be found watching and stroking my chin at highbrow cinematic masterpieces……. such as err Twilight, Harry Potter and Jordan and Peter Stateside.
I unashamedly like trash, my usual criteria when watching a film is: “is it funny?” and “Does it have any blood in it?” If the answer to the former is yes, and the latter is no… then I’ll watch it. This, as you can imagine, drives Husband mad. Once, so much so, he threw a magnificent tantrum in a cinema’s box office, announcing to all around that he “Wasn’t watching the fucking Guru, I’ll go and watch that film about Dragons on my own!” then stomped off, leaving Sister-in-law and I to watch our funny film (which turned out to be crap), whilst he fed his manliness in another screen.
Coco Avant Chanel is a definite exception to this rule. When the August issue flagged it up as the film to watch I was really excited. I love Chanel. I love the timelessness of the classic pieces. So much so that last year I won some Selfridges vouchers, and spent them on a Chanel 2.5 Lamb’s skin leather purse for £320 smackers. It was my pride and joy and something I planned to pass down to generations when I was an old lady. This dream was snatched away from me, by a dirty little scrotum that took it from my bag in a club toilet back in April. The pain of realising I was a complete idiot to take it out with me in the first place, was so much, that I embarked on a Jagermeister binge in said club with Miss Systems and threw up purple sick for 2 days after.
There was one person I knew would want to come with me to see this. Nurse S. Nurse S is an advocate of labels. She comes from the ilk that if you pay more for something it will last you longer, quality over quantity when clothes are concerned, Vogue is a long lost forgotten book of the bible and Christian Dior should rule the earth.
So we met at Manchester’s only Independent Cinema (See.. I can do bloody cultured..!), where over a pre film dinner, she asked me not to disprove all that she knows is right and true in fashion magazines. I assured her, that the point of this project was to not disprove anything, it was to see, if I implemented everything that was advised… would my life genuinely improve for the better? I hope it bloody works to be honest, because I look like a potato today.
The film itself was really good. French, with English subtitles, Audrey Tautou was entirely convincing as Coco Chanel. Something I didn’t know about Coco Chanel which I do now is that according to the film, she did a lot of standing in different landscapes, looking a little quirky, staring wistfully into the distance. Oh well, Icons will be Icons I suppose. She also liked her fags, so probably smelled less like No 5 and more like my old Maths teacher. This aside, a very good call by Marie Claire, and it made me put another £1 in my New Chanel Purse savings tin that I started when I had the other nicked.
So a big thumbs up to the August film recommendation. That’s 2 films out of 2 now Marie Claire!
