Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky (2009) - film review

In Paris, 1913, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel is beginning to make a name for herself as a couturiere.  Meanwhile, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysees, Igor Stravinsky is staging his avant-garde ballet The Rite of Spring.  Coco is greatly impressed by this production but the reaction of the other spectators is far from positive and the show ends in a noisy riot.  Seven years later, at the height of her success, Coco is devastated by the untimely death of her lover Boy Capel.  Stravinsky is now a hard-up refugee in Paris, a fugitive of the Russian Revolution.  When their paths cross, they are magnetically drawn to one another.  Stravinsky gladly accepts Coco’s offer to stay at her villa at Garches, the perfect place for him to resume his work.  Thus begins a passionate liaison between two creative geniuses...

It would appear that films about Coco Chanel are like London buses.  You can hang about for ages waiting for one to turn up and when one finally does put in an appearance another comes along in its slipstream a split second later.  Not long after Anne Fontaine shed some light on Chanel’s early life in Coco avant Chanel, Jan Kounen delivered this follow-up biopic which traces the fashion icon’s later life, focussing on her association with the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.  Neither film really does justice to its subject and both seem to be more preoccupied with style than substance.  Kounen’s is probably the more interesting and stylistically adventurous film, although its numerous attempts to draw direct parallels between the two creative talents it depicts do occasionally veer towards the frankly ridiculous.  

Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky is based on the 2002 biographical novel by Chris Greenhalgh, who contributed to the screenplay.  Incredible as it may seem, the film was originally intended to be directed by William Friedkin, the man who brought us the horror classic The Exorcist (1973), and was to have starred Marina Hands, who recently found international fame through Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley (2003).  In the end, the part of Coco Chanel was given to Anna Mouglalis, an actress-turned model who became the face of Chanel in a high-profile marketing campaign in 2003.  Friedkin was replaced by Jan Kounen, an equally improbable choice of director given that the latter is best known for his visceral action-thriller Dobermann (1997).

With her glacial composure, deep sensual voice and elegant bearing, Anna Mouglalis looks as if she was manufactured specifically for the role of Coco Channel.  She is certainly far more convincing in the part than the waif-like gamine Audrey Tautou.  Mouglalis epitomises the modern woman of the 1920s, free-spirited, exotic and confident, yet she also exudes an aura of dark melancholy.  It’s a lonely business being a genius, a sentiment that is echoed by Mads Mikkelsen’s equally laudable portrayal of Igor Stravinsky.  Both lead actors convey an air of tragic solitude which serves the film well.  There is something artificial about their characters’ amorous entanglement, an attempt to grasp something which neither can possess, a desire that can never be satisfied.   Completing the fraught love triangle is Catherine, Stravinsky’s consumptive wife, played with equal conviction and intensity by another notable acting talent, Yelena Morozova.

The performances are easily the best thing about this film.  Stylistically, it is something of a mixed bag, superficially impressive but not entirely palatable.  The film begins magnificently with an authentic recreation of the notorious first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris in May 1913.  Before we know what is happening we are subjected to the slightly surreal spectacle of a violent confrontation between modern art and delicate bourgeois sensibility, with modern art failing to win many converts (apparently, it didn’t take much to tranform an audience of ballet-loving toffs into a rabble of mud-slinging hooligans in those day).  After the obligatory newsreel footage of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, the film begins proper and falls back several gears, settling into the slow tempo of a gently simmering chamber piece, something that feels flat and listless after the spectacular opening sequence.  The deficiencies in the script are compounded by some painfully mechanical mise en scène, although this is at least partly redeemed by the sheer elegance of the photography and the haunting lyricism of a score which pays a respectful homage to Stravinsky’s work.

For a romantic drama, Coco Chanel et Igor Stravinsky is a surprisingly passionless affair.  Far from being erotic and sensual, the love scenes have a marble-like froideur, possessing something of the raw carnality of the works of Lucien Freud.   This may have been deliberate, intended to convey the artificial and ephemeral nature of Chanel and Stravinsky’s romantic association.   Although this liaison may have, as the film conjectures, given a temporary boost to the protagonists’ careers, it is apparent that it is never going to develop into an amour fou, and you can’t help feeling that the film is perhaps slightly overstating the significance of Channel and Stravinsky’s amorous fling.   Whilst the film is far from perfect, it still manages to be a strangely compelling piece, somewhat more involving and nuanced than Anne Fontaine’s more conventional Coco biopic.

© James Travers 2010

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