Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky (2009)

It begins with the shocking (at the time) premier of the 1913 Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's great ballet, "Rite of Spring," that resulted in a minor riot in the theater (police were called, people were out of their seats and shouting). In a way, this recreation justifies the film right there--it's a bold and believable staging of the original, which has huge importance in the history of music and dance.

Then there is a party after the war, with typical early 1920s abandonment. A new era has arrived, and Stravinsky and Chanel meet.

The rest might seem to be history, but it's not. The whole rest of the film is really fiction, overall, a supposed affair between the two, and the supposed results of it in their work (Chanel No. 5 and some of Stravinsky's middle period works).

It's a slow unfolding, in part because there is little to work with. The first half hour is made up of just two scenes (the ballet and the party). Then there are mostly quiet and upscale domestic situations, some intimacies, some quiet times between. The period details are pretty wonderful, and the filming is respectfully beautiful, much like a Merchant Ivory film (which might be set in the same general period).

Acting? This is a puzzle. Both Chanel (French actress Ann Mouglalis) and Stravinsky (Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen) play everything with painful restraint. Who's to say exactly what these people were like, but surely the music is nothing if not crazy for the times (and beautifully crazy, for sure), and the fashions were nothing if not radical (and beautifully so)? But things develop as if everyone is psychotically shy and inhibited.

Most of you know there was another Coco Chanel movie released this same year, "Coco before Chanel," about the young woman's life before her fame, and in a way, the Coco there played by Audrey Tatou makes more sense. That movie was imperfect, too, and it might be said that between the two, a glimpse of the real woman might be possible, which is in a way remarkable enough. The addition of Stravinsky and his music is compelling on an artistic level, but not a dramatic one.

The movie, in its own way, tries to be romantically dramatic. The camera moves around people as they speak, and follows them into rooms and around corners. The music (mostly Stravinsky's) is vivid and rich (and Modern), and the sets are filled with plain old prettiness--wallpaper and light through doorways and a room full of flower petals (leading, we find out, to perfumes). It's all a great place to end up for an evening.

If only the company were more interested, and interesting.

If you think Audrey Tautou's Coco in Coco before Chanel is a restrained performance, Anna Mouglalis' Coco in Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky will seem downright glacial. But not cold in a romantic sense, just careful and controlled as you might expect from the iconic head of a fashion house and perfume.

Then again, Stravinsky, despite his iconoclastic Rite of Spring presented in its disturbing debut, is almost as glacial and controlling as Coco. Their love scenes are pretty as a picture, yet that's the point—they are a metaphor for the detached heroes playing at love. The film is inaccessible if you want to experience the subjects' passions in depth but satisfying if you wish to see the sacrifice these 20th-century monuments made in their personal lives for their creations.

The real strength of this biopic is in the production design and cinematography, a triumph of black and white idolatry in a muted color envelope. The architectural rendering of Coco's obsession with black and white, right down to white doors with black borders, is unforgettable, making Igor's tight fitting clothes and equally stiff glasses counterpoint to the elegantly reserved Coco. The estate, autos, and concert scenes are so realistically wrought as to make you think you were there.

The third act is a disappointment despite attempts to connect the heroes with their elder years. Well, maybe that's the point—cold is a cold does, tribal, pagan rites don't always end up well with cold monochromatic passion. However, the film manages to make it all seductive.

It's not easy to enter this closed world of fashion and composition—Igor's wife Katarina (Elena Morozova) and her children are mere accessories in the tight drama between Coco and Igor. However, the principals are so carefully controlled that even we the film spectators are outsiders

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky: A mixture of Chanel No. 5 and the music of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". It depicts a love story between two geniuses: madness, passion, pain and aesthetics. With her beauty and her deep voice, Anna Mouglalis embodies her character with grace and talent. She's truly sublime. The cast is very good, and it is beautifully filmed, full of gorgeous details. The historical reconstruction is also almost perfect.

Although this film is quite different from Kounen's previous movies, it is primarily a film which is qualitatively very solid. One of the most memorable sequences of the film is the moment when, after a short sequence introducing Coco Chanel, we watch the famous sequence of the Rite of Spring. Although you cannot compare Stravinsky with Kounen, this sequence refers in a way to the reaction he got with some of his previous films: adored by some and totally rejected by others. After this sequence, we enter directly in the plot that tightens the relationship between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. Through this story of feverish passion and this both intense and particular relationship, Kounen questions the turmoil of creation and thus plunges us into the intimacy of two of the most influential figures of their time, each being on the verge of achieving something extreme in their work (fashion/perfume, and avant-garde music). A very interesting film that demonstrate that Kounen has the ability to capture a new subject: not really a biopic, more a tale of an intense passion and confusion. The question remains whether this film is a parenthesis in his career or a new development.

COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY is a sumptuously beautiful film to watch - all artsy art nouveau decor, almost devoid of conversation, with captiating portrayals of two of the 20th century's most creative talents - Coco and Igor - played with distant but memorable acting by Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen. And there is enough of the core star (Stravinsky's 'Le sacre du printemps') of the 'biography' to make it musically stable. But the problem with this otherwise tasty peak into the lives of Coco and Igor is the lack of accuracy of fact. Perhaps that is what writers Chris Greenhalgh, Carlo De Boutiny, writer/director Jan Kounen had in mind: drop a few elements of fact, mix those with a huge dollop of imagination and create a moment of lust and frustration that usually accompanies the public and private lives of stars. Perhaps in their eyes, fiction is stranger than fact.

What we do know is that prior to the May 29, 1913, at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris scandalous premiere of 'Le sacre du printemps' Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen) was a very successful composer of such favorites as 'The Firebird' and 'Petrouska' and before his premiere of 'Le sacre' was presented by the Ballet Russes under the direction of Diagilev (Grigori Manukov) with choreography by the notorious Vaslav Nijinsky (Marek Kossakowski in a very bland portrayal): Stravinsky would later write in his autobiography of the process of working with Nijinsky on the choreography, stating that "the poor boy knew nothing of music" and that Nijinsky "had been saddled with a task beyond his capacity." In the audience is the icy Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) who, still grieving for her deceased lover Boy Patel (Anatole Taubman), connects with the primitive passions of the production. The film then cuts to 1920 with Stravinsky and his four children and tuberculous wife Katerina (Yelena Morozova) barely existing in Paris when Diaghilev introduces Stravinsky to the wealthy patron Coco Chanel who invites the poverty stricken Stravinsky family to stay in her lavish villa outside Paris where Stravinsky composes while Katerina copies her husband's music and Coco keeps her successful Parisian business and seeks out her famous perfume Chanel No. 5. Some history books (including memoirs by Stravinsky himself) state that the stay lasted for only 2 weeks and that the two were simply close friends, but the creators of the film would have us believe that a torrid love affair occurred under the eyes of Katerina, a lusty sexual fulfilling of a need for both geniuses which ends in Katerina and the children moving out to Biarritz and distance develops between Igor and Coco: the secretive patronage of Coco to the Ballet Russes is supposed to have allowed a new performance of the 'Sacre' with costumes designed by Chanel and re-choreographed by Leonid Massine - the truth of these elements cannot be proved.

So what we have here is a two hour nearly wordless study of the needs of two famous people colliding in an affair but also focusing the world of Paris' attention on new ways of creativity. Mikkelsen and Mouglalis are terrific if cold, the 'love' scenes are beautifully photographed, and the decor of Chanel's house and all of the costumes are splendid. Gabriel Yared provides a musical score that is based on phrases from Stravinsky and makes for an exciting background for this visual outing. It is worth viewing if only to step inside the Paris of the time of the two main characters. Just don't expect solid facts to reign! Grady Harp

Anna Mouglalis is very thin, Mads Mikkelsen has wonderful cheekbones and they do not convince me that they are playing Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky respectively. The other actors, with the exception of Grigori Manukov as Diaghilev, left no impression on me at all. Surely Chanel had more passion, more anger in her than we see in Mouglalis; surely Stravinsky made more attempts to assert himself with the domineering Chanel than Mikkelsen does here.

I was left with a great regret that the great masters of cinema have gone, the directors that were able to fashion material like this into art: Visconti, Losey, Ophuls.