COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY

At one point in the latest “Chanel” movie Igor Stravinsky (a beautifully tanned Mads Mikkelsen) turns to Coco (an equally ravishing Anna Mouglalis) and says something to the effect of  “...but I am an artist.  You are a shopkeeper.”  The irony of course is that this movie wouldn’t have the high profile it does if it weren’t for the enduring brand recognition of Chanel.  On the other hand, when it comes down to it, isn’t Stravinsky more interesting?

Unfortunately we won’t know anything based on Jan Kounen’s movie, an adaptation of the novel, Coco and Igor, by Chris Greenhalgh.  The film opens with the now notorious (but probably mostly unknown to the non-classical music or ballet crowd) 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring.  The music was composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, just before his definitive schizophrenic break.   There is even a funny bit where composer and choreographer blame each other for the audience revolt. The whole thing is beautifully interpreted by Kounen with the flowing camera capturing all of the chaos and excitement that must have accompanied this revolutionary moment.  Apparently Chanel was in the audience although she did not meet Stravinsky then.

They do finally meet in 1920 at a party and the next thing you know Chanel is offering her country house, Bel Respiro, outside of Paris, to Stravinsky and his family which in includes his wife, Catherine (Elena Morozova) and their four children.  Igor is set up in a room with a Steinway piano and we watch him compose, fueled at first by the love and editing of his wife and later, ostensibly, by sex and alcohol.  Given the lack of resemblence between the actors and their real counterparts, the film becomes the meeting of the cool controlled seductress and who peels away collars and removes the glasses of the “nerd” to reveal the hot blooded hunk underneath. 

The film is painterly, all art and costume design and in that sense it is indeed exquisite.  It seems as if no visual detail is overlooked from the interior decor of the house, to the cars, carriages, hats, clothing and the recreation of the dance.   On the other hand, there is an emptiness to the narrative that design cannot fill.  It doesn’t help that the director is overly fond of holding, interminably, on the main characters faces in close-up, in fact every shot is too long.  There is slow and then there is ponderous and this film dances a bit too close to the edge.   

Novelist Greenlaugh admits that he had to invent the details of the affair between the two titans based on very few facts, as there is no correspondence or much other evidence of the relationship.   Thus significance is drawn where there seems to be done.   For example, the fact that the invention of Chanel No 5 coincided with the revival of The Rite of Spring seems an almost insulting parallel: we see Coco sniffing samples provided by scientist, as Igor actually composes.  At the end of the film we seem them, aged,  presumably, not long before they die...and apparently they died on the same day.  It doesn’t add up to much.

Perhaps it is because I am a fan of Stravinsky and what he means to modern music and ballet that I felt slighted.  This is a man who dashed out of Russia before the revolution, composed for Balanchine, hung out with Picasso, taught at Harvard, advised Chaplin, was decorated by Pope Paul, dined with JFK.  And that is a mere taste of who he knew and what he did in his long life.  According to this film, his relationship with Coco Chanel seems like one of the least interesting things about him.  In the end, I’ll take the The Rite of Spring over my bottle of Chanel No. 5 any day.

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky opens June 11, 2010.

Directed by Jan Kounen; written by Chris Greenhalgh, Carlo de Boutiny and Jan Kounen, from the novel, Coco and Igor, by Chris Greenhalgh; produced by Claudie Ossard and Chris Bolzli; Director of Photography, David Ungaro; edited by Anny Danché.

With: Mads Mikkelsen (Igor Stravinsky); Anna Mouglalis (Coco Chanel); Elena Morozova (Catherine Stravinsky); Natacha Lindinger (Misia Sert); and Grigori Manoukov (Sergei Diaghilev).