“Coco avant Chanel” (“Coco Before Chanel”) is an aptly named title behooved for a biopic on Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s sexual preference for men with power and money. During an era when jobs were a chore and women endeavored to become housewives, the rise of a French sinewy silhouette whose novel tastes in attire reflected her equally unique ideals about life, revolutionized fashion and the status quo of a woman’s place in society.

For a biopic backed by exquisite costumes designed by Catherine Leterrier and the stubbornly talented “Coco Chanel body double,” Audrey Tautou (“The Da Vinci Code”), “Coco avant Chanel” stumbles with hurried transitions and overstated drama to cloak what may rub off on audiences as sexual “business-like transactions” during Chanel’s rise to the top. Morally, the flick treads in the deep, muddy waters of quintessential Hollywood. What’s quintessential Hollywood? You guessed it — sex and drama.

“Coco avant Chanel” is an adaptation of “Chanel,” a biography penned by former Coco Chanel friend and former “Vogue France” editor in chief Edmonde Charles-Roux, that reveals the impoverished pre-Coco Chanel life the designer had worked so hard to hide as orphans were unjustly stigmatized, complicating marriages and social perceptions.

Director and writer Anne Fontaine (“The Girl from Monaco”) adapts an unsympathetic air to the Chanel biopic. In Fontaine’s eyes, Chanel’s sexual escapades for personal gain trump the creativity of Chanel.

Chanel’s orphan roots mold a woman yearning for a silver spoon to nourish her hunger for a renowned position in society. Chanel stops at nothing to establish the Chanel brand that epitomizes luxury.

Chanel leaves the orphanage at 18-years-old for tailoring by day and a moonlighting singing gig via cabaret in Moulin, France, where she meets less-than-dashing millionaire ?tienne Balsan (Beno?t Poelvoorde, “Beauties at War”). But what she sees in him is far from physical lust. He’s her ticket out of poverty. “He’s less dumb than the others,” Chanel justifies. “Plus he has connections.”

Balsan leaves for his countryside estate, leaving Chanel behind in Moulin after their tryst, but the stubborn Chanel shows up at Balsan’s doorstep and claims that she was on her way to see her sister and wanted to visit the millionaire. Although she enters as a temporary guest in the mansion, Chanel integrates herself among his elite friends, many celebrities and wealthy businessmen, as a means of indirect conviction to Balsan for her permanent stay.

Chanel integrates herself as Balsan’s mistress and familiarizes with the upper echelon of society, where corsets, lace and ostentatious embroidery define luxury. Seeking to change convention, she begins her hobby creating hats by working from the belief that femininity can be exuded in simplicity and covering up the bosom has men imagining the woman’s curves. Hoping to pursue design in Paris, Chanel seduces Balsan’s friend, Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola, “Grace is Gone”), of Capel’s investment into Chanel’s first boutique from which trysts blossom into love.

With 5 percent of the flick left, the drama desists after Capel’s fatal car accident, upon which Chanel vows never to love again.

It’s impossible to say the remaining 5 percent did justice to Gabrielle Chanel as Coco Chanel, when the movie flickers through the success of Chanel (the brand) like a forced PowerPoint presentation of photographs sans bullet points — not to mention that Fontaine’s writing was a potential hindrance to Tautou’s performance.

But resemblances aside, Tautou surprises and convincingly upholds the imagined posture and grace of the iconic Chanel for an audience who has yet to dig up archives of her interviews.

Misled Chanel fans walked into the theater expecting a history of the innovative mind behind the garment and the iconic label, but instead were shocked with a love story touting the underlying implication: sleep your way to the top.

So what does “Coco avant Chanel” have to do with Chanel aside from who slept with whom? Sadly, not much, although it was inspirational to watch a woman from a destitute background living in a society where the idea of a working woman in the upper class was as taboo as screaming, “I love Chanel,” in a Gucci boutique.

For fashionistas out there who are still interested in “Coco avant Chanel” for the sake of fashion, Chanel quipped, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” It’s just too bad that this insight had to be taken from a “Harper’s Bazaar” archive.

2 stars out of 5.