Movie Review - 'Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky'

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravisnky Starring Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis Directed by Jan Kounen Rated R

Igor Stravinsky may have been one of the most important figures in music history, but on this subject, I'll side with another important music figure, Tom Petty, when he said, "Don't bore us; get to the chorus." The French film Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky will flat-out waste a lot of your time. It's not a complete failure, and when there's something happening on screen, it's almost always worth your attention. The trouble is, very little at all happens in the first 20 minutes of the film - almost nothing in the first 12 or so - and there are way too many moments where the film just stands still. It's a real shame the action is so sporadic, because these are, obviously, two key figures in the development of modern western culture - Stravinsky the influential and challenging Russian composer and Chanel the legendary designer - who were rumored to have had an affair in the 1920s. That alone should be enough to spark a very good film, and Coco and Igor has a few terrific elements that deserve mention, if not wholehearted praise. Mads Mikkelsen (the steely Bond villain from Casino Royale) plays Stravinsky as rigid as you might expect and there's a tucked in sensuality throughout Anna Mouglalis' portrayal of Chanel that isn't there in Audrey Tautou's performance from last year. When they, um, get down to business, it's not like the overly sanitized movie sex we usually see, and in a film about a physical relationship between two people seemingly unable to express that physicality in other ways, that's important. The production design transports us adequately enough. The music, understandably, is a strong part. And there's another very good performance, too, by Yelena Morozova as Stravinsky's tuberculosis-stricken wife. With all of those things taken into consideration, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky still shoots blanks. Mostly, it feels like a case where the wrong parts of the novel were brought to the forefront during the adaptation process. It doesn't happen often, but it's no surprise when you see that screenwriter Chris Greenhalgh and novelist Chris Greenhalgh are one in the same. There's irony that this film is about Stravinsky, a composer known for his fascination with complex rhythms, because Greenhalgh doesn't seem to alter the rhythm of a book to fit a motion picture. There is no exaggeration about very little happening in the film's first few scenes. There is only one brief scene with dialogue in the first ten minutes, while the rest is crowd footage of people filing into a concert hall. This is, apparently, the big debut of Rite of Spring, perhaps Stravinsky's signature work and one that, at its debut, caused an audience riot, so far removed from traditional classical music was its structure. That has nothing to do with Coco Chanel, however, because she didn't meet the composer for another seven years. And the chronology might be off in other places, too, though that would matter less if the backdrop created for these star-crossed lovers had more impact. But it's so languid and too many scenes accomplish very little that all you can do is focus on the flaws. What might have been better, because the leading performances show so much potential, is a Chanel bio-pic that weaves in Stravinsky and/or vice versa. They're lives we should know better, and nobody's really opposed to learning more. So to give both of them short shrift - that they exist only within this little romance - does little to reinforce just how pivotal this time together could have been.

Comments

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[Michel.E]

It's a shame this film promotes the fantasy taht there was a riot "because of" Strawinski's music at the premiere. The riot was mostly due to the poor performance of the dancers, and the poor choices of costumes and choreography. Had the music been more traditional, there would simply have been "boos" and hisses. The music being revolutionary pushed the audience reaction one step further. And of course, try counting to "13" in Russian... it couldn't have helped the dancers to have their choreographer off-stage yelling numbers at them in polysyllabic Russian!
To be perfectly clear here: the follow-up performances of Sacre du printemps as a concert work were raging successes.. and this is only a few bare months later. The "riot" was ONLY at the Paris premiere of the ballet version. The music was, therefore, obviously NOT the cause of the riot at the premiere. (Paris audiences were notorious for making drama out of the slightest incident as well. Another work that "caused a riot" at its premiere was Debussy's Pelléas et Melisande, if only for its approach to narrative and form... hardly a reason for "riots". )