Coco & Igor
Autumn 2010 Features series
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 4:00pm
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 7:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Jan Kounen
Screenplay by Chris Greenhalgh
Based on the book by Chris Greenhalgh
Starring Anna Mouglalis, Mads Mikkelsen, Elena Morozova, Natacha Lindinger
Rated 18A ·
2h 0m
France
French, Russian, English
Coco & Igor (Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky)
In 1920, the lives of two of the last century’s greatest artists intersected. Coco Chanel, the famous designer, befriended the great, revolutionary composer Igor Stravinsky and his family, offering the penniless and homeless musician refuge in her country mansion. It has been rumoured Coco and Igor had an affair at this time. Director Jan Kounen takes this premise and spins it into an intimate and deeply moving portrait of a marriage challenged by a beautiful and famous female benefactor.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky begins in Paris in 1913. Though Coco is deeply infatuated with the rich and handsome polo player Arthur “Boy” Capel, she attends the landmark performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, and is instantly fascinated. Stravinsky’s ballet is a wild and primitive assault on bourgeois taste, a precursor to the chaos about to engulf Europe. Coco recognizes a fellow iconoclast, as her own ideas about women’s fashion are causing a similar sensation. Shortly after the war ends, the two meet again. Coco is now wealthy and successful, but shattered by Boy’s death in a car crash. Igor, who was made an outcast after the tumultuous revolution in his native Russia, is now a destitute refugee living in exile in Paris. Introduced to Igor by the famous impresario Sergeï Diaghilev, Coco invites the composer, his wife and their four children to stay at her new villa, Bel Respiro, in Garches.
What ensues is a beautifully judged story about the mutual attraction between two artists, finely balanced by the loyalty and love Stravinsky feels for his wife and family. Despite the charisma exuded by these two monumental personalities, who both redefined their fields, we feel immense sympathy for Stravinsky’s wife as she struggles to maintain her equilibrium amid the sparks that begin to fly around her. Kounen brilliantly places us in the worlds of both Coco, whose mansion serves as a visual expression of her design ideas, and Stravinsky, who doggedly wrestles his musical demons. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky embraces the brilliance of these two rebels, dissecting the intimacies of their personal lives with an empathy that leaves the viewer reaching for superlatives.