Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

According to some historians, the couturier Coco Chanel and the modernist composer Igor Stravinsky had a brief affair in the early 1920s. Stravinsky was married with a family while Coco was unattached. According to the scriptwriters their paths had crossed before, in 1913, when the "The Rite of Spring" a ballet by Diaghilev with music by Stravinsky opened in Paris, causing such a commotion that the police were called. Coco was one of the audience who liked the piece. Seven or so years later she invited Stravinsky and his family to live in her elegant suburban villa. Stravinsky's wife Katerina was suffering from TB. It's not long before he and Coco are making passionate love and not long after that the rest of the household twigs to what is going on. The affair does not last long though it impels Stravinsky to the completion of one of his major works. To him, charming and successful as she is, Coco is not an artist, merely a shopkeeper, and he does not dissent when Katerina points out Coco buys people.

Coco went on to make a fortune out of perfume as well as clothes and Stravinsky became a major 20th century composer. She seems to have gotten over Stravinsky fairly quickly and indeed continued to support (anonymously) his work. Stravinsky on the other hand seems to have been shaken to the core. He did, after all, have something to lose, whereas Coco was a free agent.

This production is all that you would expect from a European director – it is all beautifully framed and shot – Coco's own designs are much in evidence – and the story proceeds at a stately pace. As Stravinsky, Mads Mikkelsen, best known as a Bond villain in Casino Royale, is every inch the uptight Russian composer, while Anna Mougladis is rather enigmatic as Coco. She likes the music and likes to support artists, but just why she takes a liking to Stravinsky is not evident, unless you accept Katerina's view that she likes to buy pretty people as well as things. Here the film makers have given us a film of beauty, but one which does not explain itself. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, we can all work out our own scenarios, but aesthetic considerations seldom amount to the full story.

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

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

This film is about the famous fashion designer Coco Chanel, and her attraction to the Russian musician Igor Stravinsky.

"Chanel Coco & Igor Stravinsky" has beautiful classical music, thoughtful cinematography and great atmosphere, but unfortunately there is not much story to fill the film. The pacing is dead slow, probably to stretch it to 2 hours. I find the passion between Coco an Igor not enough, and the jealousy and rivalry between Coco and Katarina not intense enough.

In the end, the film cuts suddenly into the future then back to 1920, which is confusing. In addition, the ending does not bring so much closure to the story, it would have been good to generously reduce the existing footage and expand on what happens between the two time frames. Though the film is not boring, it is dull and lacking in passion.