Coco and Coco

We felt like watching a movie at home. We dropped in at the nearby video store, and to my delight, I saw Coco Chanel on the shelf. We had missed the movie completely when it was playing in town.

We popped the dvd into the player. We quickly went through all the set-up options and settled in to what we expect would be a delightful evening of further expanding our experience of all things French.

First we were puzzled the voice-over at the start of the movie was in English. But, what do we know? Maybe Coco is a Hollywood flick after all. So we went back into set-up to remove the English subtitling. And quickly forgot all the incongruency between what we've heard and read about the movie and what we were watching.

The movie was thoroughly enjoyable. There was the august Shirley MacLaine as a festy older Chanel and someone I didn't recognise as the younger Chanel. But two and a half hours later in the wee hours of the morning, we were struggling to stay awake; the movie did not look like it was anywhere near ending! We soldiered on till the end, some near four hours later!

I only figured out today, after checking around with friends and imdb.com that there is the big-screen Coco avant Chanel, and there is the made-for-mylifetime-TV Coco Chanel.

Now I have to get my hot little hands on the French movie version...