Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is a film with fantastic cinematography, a visually pleasing wardrobe, and empty characters and plot. This is a high-production mess of a film that substituted staring for acting, famous names and events for character development, and explicit sex for true passion. If you read about Chanel’s fashion legacy and Stravinsky’s music, you would learn more about them as people than you would at any point in this movie. This dull, hollow film cloaks itself in high fashion and French subtitles to try to fool the audience into thinking it is art, but don't be fooled nor impressed with Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky starts with the premiere of Stravinsky’s newest ballet The Rite of Spring. Like many great artists, Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen) was ahead of his time, and in the film, his ballet is so upsetting that the Paris audience, accustomed to Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, storms out or stays to hurl insults. When the police show up, the audience erupts in fighting and a full out riot. Unlike most of the audience, however, Mademoiselle Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) appreciates the ballet. After the opening night, the film jumps ahead into World War I and the Russian Revolution. Igor Stravinsky and his family are in France, looking for a place to stay. Coco asks Igor to bring his ailing wife Catherine (Elena Morozova) and children to her villa outside of Paris and live there for awhile. Igor, feeling a sexual attraction to Coco, doesn’t need much persuading. After living there for only a few days, Igor and Coco become lovers. After that happens, Coco picks out a new perfume (ooh, Chanel No. 5!), Igor and Coco have a lot of sex, and the film closes with the triumphant success of Stravinsky’s new ballet.
The sex scenes in this movie will shock some American filmgoers. American films tend to focus in on parts of the body during sex scenes as opposed to showing both bodies head-to-toe. Honestly, it doesn't matter how much or little a film shows of a sexual act just so long as it fits the rest of the film, and the audience feels invested in these characters understands their relationship. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, like any other film, is not daring or sensual just because it showed us more skin. We don't get swept up in their romance. Instead, we get upset that Stravinsky thought it was okay to discard his sick wife and shack up with his hostess, and once over the initial anger, we spend the rest of the movie fighting boredom.
Another failure of the film is how little we learn about Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky as people and as artists. There is not a lot of dialogue in the film, and the few lines exchanged between characters did not give much insight into their creative process or the attraction between Igor and Coco. Partway into the film, there is a sequence where Coco meets with her perfumer and chooses her signature fragrance Chanel No. 5. You watched this scene intently, hoping that by watching her choose this perfume you might learn more about the woman beyond the black and white clothing. Instead, the only reward was the forced biopic moment when the perfumer smiles at Coco and says, “Number five,” as if expecting the audience to smile back and exclaim, “Oh, Chanel No. 5! I know that perfume!”
As mentioned, in Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, dialogue is often replaced with extended shots and montages of people staring at each other. Early on, we forgive the film because we hope the filmmakers are setting up chemistry before delving into these characters’ personalities. As the film wears on, however, we care less and less for Igor and Coco, and instead of igniting feelings of passion, their stares are more likely to incite a severe case of the giggles. Perhaps a better title for Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky would be French People Staring, Screwing and Smoking; the description is more apt and perhaps will dissuade others from also wasting two hours of their life on this subpar biopic.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Special features include a making-of featurette, the film’s theatrical trailer, and more trailers for Sony Pictures Classics releases.
"Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" is on sale September 28, 2010 and is rated R. Biopic, Drama, Foreign, Romance. Directed by Jan Kounen. Written by Chris Greenhalgh, Carlo De Boutiny, Jan Kounen. Starring Anna Mouglalis, Mads Mikkelsen.
