Sony Pictures Classics photo Audrey Tatou plays the resourceful woman destined to build the empire of Chanel.

After adding “Amelie” to the universal language of movies, actress Audrey Tatou takes on an even more famous name and makes it her own in “Coco Before Chanel.” Reminiscent of “La Vie En Rose,” only with less tragedy and more hope, it follows the resourceful Gabrielle Chanel and her sister from the orphanage where their wayward father left them, through the dance halls where she got her nickname from a popular ditty about a little dog, to the mansion where she became the mistress of an aristocrat. The richly realized period piece waits until the very end to acknowledge the fashion icon she is destined to become. The fact that the audience knows her eventual fate is quickly forgotten, as we watch her instead making her life up as she goes along. Tatou is effortlessly appealing — a quality that the real Coco may not have shared.