Coco Before Chanel film smoking poster banned in France

Paris has prohibited publicity images of Audrey Tautou, playing fashion icon Coco Chanel in a new movie Coco Before Chanel. The problem was in posters, representing Audrey-Coco smoking a cigarette.

Paris has prohibited publicity images of Audrey Tautou, playing fashion icon Coco Chanel in a new movie Coco Before Chanel. The problem was in posters, representing Audrey-Coco smoking a cigarette.
Despite smoking about 50 cigarettes a day, Chanel was 87 when she died. Almost all the original images of the designer from the film show a cigarette in her right hand.


Yet RATP, which runs the buses and trains in the French capital, claims that cigarettes
are banned on the entire French transport system, and there is no reason why they should be giving free advertising through this film poster.
“Coco Before Chanel” tells the story of how Chanel rose from a country orphanage to become an international star by founding her unique fashion label. Film focuses on the early years of Gabrielle Chanel, who was nicknamed 'Coco' during her failed attempt to launch a singing career.

By the way, the film has been widely criticised for ignoring Chanel's passionate affair with a Nazi officer during the wartime occupation of Paris.

Responding to the cigarette ban, the film's producers said there were no plans to display images of Chanel without her trademark cigarette.
The precedent follows a similar ban on a poster of the legendary Gallic film maker Jacques Tati smoking a pipe which was replaced with a yellow windmill to conform to French rules prohibiting the promotion of tobacco products.