Coco and Igor

Just heard Stravinski's Rites of Spring last night. It reminds me of a 2009 film Coco and Igor I saw last week as part of the French film festival. It's a film based on a novel and screenplay by Chris Greenhalgh, directed by Jan Kounen and starring Mads Mikkelsen as Igor Stravinsky, Anna Mouglalis as Coco Chanel and Elena Morozova as Catherine Stravinsky.

It's a simple story of how at the first performance of the Rites of Spring in Paris in 1913, how mixed the audience's reactions were: some loudly protested whilst others supported it, requiring the intervention of the police. One of those who applauded it was Coco Chanel, a courturier. Then the scene switched to what happened 7 years later. Coco Chanel, whilst mourning the death of her lover Arthur "Boy" Capel., offered to put up Igor Stravinsky and his ailing wife and children at her villa at the suburbs of Paris after the Russian Revolution in 1917, an offer Stravinsky first refused but on second thoughts accepted. There, whilst Stravinsky continued to compose with wis wife acting as a sort of musical secretary and editor, a secret affair soon developed between them. Eventually Stravinsky's wife Catherine found it intolerable to continue to live under the same roof and took his children to live at Biarritz whilst Stravinsky continued to compose at the house. His music became more passionate, more violent and more barbaric  There was a new energy in his music. He rewrote the music for the ballet the Rites of Spring which Coco secretly financed. It was at that time that Coco also developed her world famous perfume, Chanel No. 5 which is still selling. It is a very special perfume with a mixture of feminine charm and savagery, just like Coco Chanel herself and just like The Rites of Spring.

I like the film. It portrays a Coco Chanel who is extremely meticulous, methodical, demanding, determined, masculine and full of passion beneath her extremely cool and elegant exterior and reveals a side of her and of Stravinsky's life that I never knew before. I also like the acting of Anna Mougalis who really brings out that curious mixture of both meticulous elegance and grace, daring and her "to hell with what the world thinks if I feel it's the right kind of things to do" kind of personality and her reliance upon the feel of the relevant material on the body of her live models at the time she created her collections which makes her such a success both in her fashion design and the creation of that unique blend of complex fragrances in her perfumes.I like in particular that scene in which a quarrel broke out between Coco and Stravinsky when she jeered at Stravinsky depending upon her wife to correct and improve on his music and he counter attacked saying that she was not an artist and she peremptorily ordered him to get out of her sight, showing nerves of steel. Elena Morozova was also excellent as the sick Catherine suffering  with equal composure but smoldering with a quiet anger and hurt beneath her calm exterior and so was Mads Mikkelsen as the tense and passionate Stravinsky. I like too the way the tension mounted between Coco and Catherine was presented with little more than the looks on their faces and eyes. The music was excellent: sometimes as Stravinsky was trying out his new composition, sometimes as background and sometimes as the actual performance of his ballet on stage. The second time the Rites of Spring was performed, with revised music and a new choreography, it was a resounding success.