1 hr 48 mins

The story of Coco Chanel is packed with incident, but this version ends where many would just be kicking into gear: the moment Chanel the woman becomes Chanel the brand. Sitting on the stairs at the triumphant conclusion of her first fashion show, Chanel (Audrey Tautou) unleashes a rare smile.

In covering Chanel's love affairs and her transformation from nightclub chanteuse to sought-after couturier, director Anne Fontaine makes one uncomfortable fact clear: despite her determination and strength of character, it's men who shape Chanel's life, from the father who abandons her to the playboy lover (Benoît Poelvoorde) who introduces her both to her future clientele and her one great love, Boy Capel (Alessandro Nivola), the man who finances her fashion dream.

Focusing as it does on Chanel's early life, anyone hoping for a glitzy fashion spectacular may be disappointed. Chanel's groundbreaking androgyny, coupled with her love for simple fabrics and shapes, make her seem almost dowdy among the elaborate costumes of the time. But if you know your fashion history, there's fun to be had spotting the origins of her most famous designs: the nuns of her convent orphanage in graphic black and white, the striped Breton fishermen's tops, the appropriation of men's clothes.

Fired in the crucible of poverty and abandonment, Chanel's cynical, fiercely individual temperament is far from likeable, and it's to Tautou's credit that our sympathies always lie with her. By turns waspish, brave and vulnerable, her gravely luminous presence anchors the film in a world that's not only faultlessly stylish, but full of real human love and loss, too.

Coco Avant Chanel is out on Thursday June 25