COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY is a lush yet curiously lifeless retelling of the affair between the eponymous duo. Each was the driving force behind a redefinition of art in the 20th century, she fashion, he music. Each was unswerving in following a inner muse that led them to unexplored country. The film about the two of them colliding in a bonfire of passion should explode off the screen. It doesnt. It is, however, art directed within a millimeter of its cinematic life, which is something, but even with the voyeuristic detailing of Chanels archly decorated home and even more archly gruff management style in her atelier, gives the whole the air of a carefully arranged museum piece preserved under glass in a vacuum.
It begins promisingly enough with the riot caused by the first performance of Stravinskys The Rite of Spring in 1913, the which is presented in snippets with all its primal force and oddity intact. The Parisian crowd, foolishly expecting something more traditional from The Ballet Russe and its choreographer, Nijinksi, erupts in outrage. The police are called. The performance is ended. Stravinsky (Mads Mikelsson) is undone. The effect of art on its viewers, its ability to evoke such strong emotion even in even such a stuffy crowd of elite dilettantes is a potent one and a paean to what great art should do. The image of Nijinski, hollow-eyed at the reception his work received, a stark insight into the artists soul. Its the last time anything resembling such force will manifest itself.
Seven years later, Chanel (Anna Mouglalis), who was in attendance at that fateful performance, is formally introduced to Stravinsky at a party. Hes an impoverished refugee from the Russian revolution. Shes in mourning for the love of her life. Being Chanel, though, she is in mourning by always wearing the chicest of little black dresses. Being Chanel, a collector of people and impressed with his work besides, she offers him the use of her country house to compose. He accepts, reluctantly, moving his ailing wife Katia (Yelena Morozova) and their four children from a cramped hotel room to the impressively deco style of the spacious house, done in variations of streamlined black-and-white. He is an intense, methodical man, formally buttoned down in dress, formally buttoned up in personality. She is an independent woman with an appetite for art and for control.
Chanel and Stravinsky begin an affair. Katia puts up with it while continuing to endlessly copy out and correct her husbands scores in her sickbed. Chanel begins to wear white. Stravinsky begins to go about without a tie. His music becomes more daring. Chanel concocts her signature perfume. Katia copies out more of Stravinskys scores and makes him feel guilty by not trying to make him feel guilty.
And that is the level of passion at work. The camera swoops with all the precision and careful calculation of an art deco flourish. Scenes are composed with equal calculation, all form, no feeling, even those detailing the coitus between the lovers. Mikkelssen is an actor who has no trouble implying the depths of seething emotion beneath Stravinskys implacable demeanor. Mouglalis is an actress with fire. Together they are choreographed into mere static figurines.
The affair goes sour. Stravinskys music once pushes even more boundaries of convention. Chanel wears chic black again and pushes the boundaries of fashion, to judge by the turned heads and raised eyebrows and general startled murmurings that greet her when she arrives at the Paris Opera in her latest creation.
COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY in its own way attempts to push the boundaries of cinema, introducing as it does dashes of surrealism, and that is why it fails. Surrealism, though startling in its time, and compelling when well-executed even today, is a vintage conceit. The result makes these innovators seem as stuffy as those outraged Parisians of 1913.
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