Biopics are tricky tasks. Telling the story of someone’s life when you’ve only got a few hours to play with means creative decisions have to be made about which bits to focus on.

This is doubly hard with someone like Coco Chanel, who led an interesting and varied life right up until the time she died at the ripe old age of 87.

Anne Fontaine’s biopic focuses on her life before she became the household name we all know.

In doing so you’d hope the film would illuminate her development and paint a rich picture of how she rose from the poor house to one of the most influential women of the 20th century.

Sadly, it remains a flat depiction of her life before the call of the fashion houses.

We never really get a sense of who Coco was or what made her tick, just a bland and featureless story which only scratches the surface of a full and interesting life.

Two young sisters are sent to an orphanage where they are taught to sew by the nuns.

Fifteen years later Gabrielle and Adrienne are working as seamstresses by day and cabaret performers by night.

Gabrielle (now nicknamed Coco) is taken under the wing of millionaire playboy Etienne Balsan and becomes increasingly more outspoken and unconventional in her dress sense.

After meeting Arthur “Boy” Capell with whom she falls in love she luckily designs a hat for a famous actress and her career as a humble seamstress skyrockets.

Arguably the most interesting aspects of Coco Chanel came later in her life.

This is a woman who not only revolutionised women’s fashion but was rumoured to have had an affair with composer Igor Stravinsky, lived in the Hotel Ritz in Paris for more than 30 years even during the Nazi occupation and was criticised for her romantic involvement with a Nazi officer.

What we’re left with is a shallow depiction of how Coco became the great woman that she was.

Audrey Tautou plays Coco as cold and austere, deliberately contrary and confrontational – behaviour which would be unlikely to garner a male sponsor who in those times was crucial if you were to have any hope of independent success.

Her relationship with Balsan is left curiously unexplored and we see very little of what endeared him to Coco in the first place.

There’s far too much of Coco sulking around bars like the world’s best dressed raincloud and not enough on how she honed her eye for style and led to the liberation of women’s fashion from its straight-laced corsets.

We’re left with a plain rags-to-riches story which is dull and uninspiring , the opposite of what you’d expect from someone as incandescent as Coco Chanel.

Coco Before Chanel (PG-13) is in cinemas on July 31