Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Director: Jan Kounen; Screenwriter: Chris Greenhalgh; Starring: Anna Mouglalis, Mads Mikkelsen, Anatole Taubman, Natacha Lindinger, Yelena Morozova; Running time: 115 mins; Certificate: 15

> Interview: Mads Mikkelsen and Anna Mouglalis

Picking up where Coco Before Chanel left off, Coco & Igor tells the story of an illicit liaison between the forty-something Coco and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Anna Mouglalis (erstwhile muse to Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld) is certainly more statuesque as Coco compared with the performance given by Audrey Tautou, but she takes it to the point of being stone cold. Playing Igor, Mads Mikkelsen conveys more passion beneath his starchy collar but the film is, above all else, stilted.

Dutch helmer Jan Kounen starts off big with a splashy though overlong performance of The Rite of Spring. The ballet appalled Parisians when it debuted in 1913 because of a determinedly unmelodic score by Stravinsky. It mightn't sound too controversial to today's filmgoers and the reaction of the on screen crowd - rising to their feet and yelling insults - makes a bemusing introduction to the story. Coco, sitting quietly in the stalls, is just as taken aback by the violent response. Afterwards she invites Igor in from the cold, offering room and board at her country mansion so that he can get to work composing his comeback.

There isn't much chemistry between Mikkelsen and Mouglalis and at first - besides fancying herself as a patron of the arts - Coco seems altruistic in her motives. It isn't just Stravinsky she supports but his wife Katerina (Yelena Morozova) and their two children. It soon turns out that Katerina is the real heroine of the piece as she is forced to endure the gradually dawning realisation that Igor is having an affair with Coco under her nose. She puts up with it for the sake of the children and because it seems to fuel Igor's creativity. This might have made Katerina seem pathetic, but Morozova plays her with high ideals, willing to sacrifice where Coco is utterly selfish.

Mouglalis cannot seem to find any redeeming features in Coco Chanel. She is a hardnosed woman, more concerned with mixing the perfect perfume (No.5) in what becomes a tiresome subplot. At one point, she tells her perfumer that she wants a scent 'like a woman, not a rose' as if to drive home her complete lack of romance. This probably stems from grief, having just lost her English lover to a car crash (as seen in the Tautou film), but there is only the merest hint of it; a single tear shed in tastefully dim lighting. Coco and Igor's love scenes are just as beautifully composed and emotionally hollow. The prettier the scene is, the uglier the affair becomes.

Mikkelsen is more clearly tortured by his impulses and it's through him that Kounen strives to illustrate the dual nature of obsession; ennobling in art as it is undignified in life. It's hardly inspiring stuff though. Likewise, anyone who considers Chanel a feminist icon on the basis of this film is more likely a misogynist. She is fearsome. Even when she does the right thing, it's because she is shamed into it. Kounen, it seems, is more awed by Coco - framing her like The Venus, or the star of her own perfume ad - rather than getting under the skin to her hidden depths. Of course it's always possible that Chanel was just a shallow bitch concerned, above all, with appearances. That outlook obviously works in fashion, but it makes a film unravel.


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