Audrey Hepburn once said Shirley MacLaine should play Coco Chanel, now she does in Lifetime Network movie premiering tonight – 3 Stars ***

By Gabrielle Pantera

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 9/13/08 – “When Audrey Hepburn and I were making the movie ‘The Children’s Hour’, she and I talked a lot about fashion designers because I didn’t know much about fashion,” says Shirley MacLaine. “She told me that I should play Coco Chanel. I disagreed because Chanel was little and scrunched-over and very short. And she said, ‘No, the spirit of the woman matches your spirit’.”

MacLaine plays the older Coco Chanel in Lifetime’s original movie. Barbora Bobulova plays the young Coco, who was named Gabrielle. Bobulova did a fantastic job as Gabrielle, showing the drive to become the ambitious designer Coco, a nickname she got for a prank.

“What drew me to the role was Chanel’s contradictions,” says MacLaine. “Her colorful rudeness. Her sense that everything was about her talent and her goodness. She could improvise a new outfit in ten seconds. I loved that. And I loved her conflict between love and ambition, as well as her conflict between how to get things done and not being hurtful.”

“I think we’re both colorful,” says MacLaine. “I think we’re both rude. I think we’re both spontaneous. We both can’t hold back what we feel to be our honest opinion. And I think we both have talent. I found Coco to be everything between generous and rude. I didn’t know what Audrey meant, but it turns out she was right.”

“Chanel’s clothes were meant more to express her personality,” says MacLaine. “Remember, she was an orphan. She was poverty-stricken. She was always afraid that it would happen to her again, and her need to stay a woman in charge is what was behind these clothes.”

“Someone looked on the Internet and found a picture of me at a Chanel collection,” says MacLaine. “I was in my twenties or thirties, but I don’t remember having been there. I could have met her. It seems to me, if I’d met her, I’d have remembered it.”

“I was wearing her clothes, all knockoffs I might add, in my twenties and thirties because they really worked then,” says MacLaine. “Not so much now. Now my personal taste runs more to plain, simple lines.”

“It was playing Coco that got me into designing my jewelry, because I was involved with her jewelry, her fashion, her profile…everything that she put together,” says Maclaine.

This is a good movie to see with a group of girlfriends. MacLaine does a great job portraying Coco Chanel, but painting Chanel as an incessant chain smoker is quite unattractive. What’s the point of all the smoking in this movie? Although smoking may have been prevalent in the times, it clouded the film and was distracting from the story and the fashion.

Coco Chanel was Fashion. To see why and how she built up her business is what I was hoping for. It would have been good to actually see more of the building of the business, the making of her designs and how it evolved. It would have been interesting to see more of her perfume business, too. More time is spent on star-crossed love than fashion. It’s odd that her fierce independence and drive for success is shown through the relationships she had with men.

To show the passage of time, some of the movie’s footage is rendered in B&W with faux scratches. That becomes tiresome and prevents seeing the color of the fashions.

A number of questions are left unanswered by the movie. Malcolm McDowell plays Marc Boucheir, a confidante and business associate of Chanel’s. Although there’s the suggestion of a powerful history there, the movie doesn’t show how Coco met Marc and how they started working together.

Fashion landmarks for Chanel are women’s trousers, her signature cardigan jacket, the little black dress, the tweed suit, the two-tone shoe and the first shoulder bag. Chanel would make her clothes using male attire such as sports jackets and ties. In 1910, she helped women realize that they can wear clothing that is comfortable.  Chanel also designed stage costumes for such plays as Cocteau’s ‘Antigone’ (1923) and ‘Oedipus Rex’ (1937), and for films including Renoir’s ‘La Règle de Jeu’.

Even today, 37 years after her death, Chanel is still a fashion icon and her rags-to-riches story is one people should enjoy watching.

‘Coco Chanel: She Conquered with Style’ debuts this Saturday, September 13th at 8pm on Lifetime.