Chichester Cinema at New Park
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
- Coco & Igor
Coco Chanel meets Sravinsky living in exile in Paris after the Russian Revolution, and a passionate love affair begins between the two giants.
Paris 1913, at the Theatre Des Champs-Elysées, Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen) premieres his ‘The Rite of Spring’. Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis), attends the premiere and is mesmerized… But the revolutionary work is too modern, too radical: the enraged audience boos and jeers. A near riot ensues. Stravinsky is inconsolable.
Seven years later, now rich, respected and successful, Coco Chanel meets Stravinsky again - a penniless refugee living in exile in Paris after the Russian Revolution. The attraction between them is immediate and electric. Coco offers Stravinsky the use of her villa in Garches so that he will be able to work, and he moves in straight away, with his children and consumptive wife. And so a passionate, intense love affair between two creative giants begins…
The two leads are magnetic. His stoicism slowly bleeds into abandon, while her blank-faced rigor bends to carnality, and then snaps back to frostiness. The historical detours remain an important piece of a deceptively simplistic picture, rooting the rumour of an affair between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky into proper context, making for an even more convincing portrait.
Selected to close last year’s Cannes film Festival, this is a highly polished and entertaining work, mingling fact and fiction. (Subtitles)
France · 2009 · Jan Kounen · 120min
