COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY

Picking up where Coco avant Chanel left off, focusing on the period when Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) became Stravinsky’s (Mads Mikkelsen) artistic benefactor, this film offers a darker second chapter to the designer’s long biography. In 1920 she befriended the great revolutionary composer and his family, offering the penniless and homeless musician refuge in her country mansion. There have been rumours that Coco and Igor had an affair at this time. Director Jan Kounen has worked with writer Chris Greenhalgh to adapt his book Coco and Igor which takes this premise and spins it into an intimate portrait of a fearless modern woman attracted to an equally indomitable man.

Shot at many of the original locations and superbly mounted from start to finish, the film opens with a breathtaking recreation of the famous riot provoked at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées by the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Chanel sits in the audience electrified by her future lover’s assault on bourgeois propriety.

“Mads Mikkelsen’s Igor is a man of refined Russian dignity and brooding artistic temperament... Anna Mouglalis’ Coco is, somewhat in contrast to the actual Coco Chanel, tall with a long neck and patrician face. She has a cool steeliness about her that is equal parts conviction and determination. In her designs and later perfumes, she knows exactly what she wants even as Igor has to search for his music... The sexually charged affair between the two strong-willed individuals is destined to be, in Cole Porter’s words, too hot not to cool down...

Stravinsky’s immortal music richly abetted by Gabriel Yared’s original score and exquisite sets from designer Marie-Hélène Sulmoni are a movie unto themselves. The costumes credited to Chattoune & Fab plus several original garments and accessories from the Chanel collection and a Karl Lagerfeld dress designed for the movie make the film a Deco delight.

There are so many guilty pleasures here that it’s amazing the film is as good as it is. The passions feel real, the roles are fully inhabited and the art speaks for itself.” — Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter