Mark your calendars! The highly anticipated movie, "Coco Before Chanel," lands in select theaters in Los Angeles and New York City on September 25.

But we know you can't wait that long (and neither can we), so not only do we have a few stills from the film to give you a peak your interest, but we were also fortunate enough to be invited to a roundtable discussion with the movie's leading lady, Audrey Tautou (of "Amelie" fame), and director Anne Fontaine, to get the story behind the story.

"Anne met me to propose the part, but without having written anything and without even knowing if she would find in Chanel's life a moment interesting enough to make a movie about. [And] not to [just] make a movie about clothes or fashion," explained Tautou (in a very lovable French accent) of the film's very first baby steps.

And if you've seen any of the promotional images of Tautou as Chanel, you can already understand why the actress was chosen as the star.



"When you see the pictures of Gabrielle Chanel and Audrey it is amazing the similarities," said Fontaine. "The way they look, the intensity of the eyes, the very thin body -- you have to have another kind of body to play Coco Chanel. She was the first androgynous woman."

"When [I saw] Audrey, I felt she wasn't beautiful, but she has a lot of charisma and she is very singular, physically speaking," Fontaine continued. "She has this determination. I think she felt liberated to play this different part."

Tautou said that before she took on the role, she had a lot of misconceptions about who Coco Chanel really was. "I realized very quickly that my idea of her was kind of false," she explained.

"I knew the icon and that she had created a new style and how elegant and strong she was and authoritative. But I thought that she was coming from the high bourgeoisie. I thought everything had been easy."

Instead of creating a fashion biopic, Fontaine focuses on the struggles of Chanel before she was a star and, above everything else, her early love life.

Fontaine and her team also dreamt up the costumes for Chanel as she evolved into her now signature aesthetic. It was only for the last scene that the director met Karl Lagerfeld and got to scour the Chanel archives to outfit Tautou.

"I wanted to have Chanel clothes for the last scene. All of the clothes that you see are from Chanel herself," she said. "It was wonderful to see [for] myself in this conservatory that nobody can visit ... all of her work under plastic. It never moved me to see a dress, but there, it was impressive."

And about her meeting with the Kaiser, Fontaine says, "I spoke to Karl in a natural way, he's very funny. I showed him the drawings we [had] for the fashion before [she was] 'Chanel.' We had to invent the beginnings of her style. It was very exciting to do ourselves. And [Karl] didn't have anything to say. [Which is fine] because I didn't want to make a movie for Chanel's house, it's not the goal."

Before you experience the wonderful and complex film yourself, check out our gallery of film stills above and let us know if you'll be running out to see it on September 25.