Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Two powerfully creative people intersect in Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, a film by Jan Kounen based on the novel by Chris Greenhalgh (who also wrote the screenplay).

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was, of course, the influential clothing designer after whom the famed perfume, Chanel No. 5, is named. Igor Stravinsky is perhaps not quite as famous in an across-the-board sort of way, but music buffs know his name well and know how influential the composer was in his own field.

But who knew that the two had a torrid affair? Or that Chanel was Stravinsky's patron--"matron" hardly seems fitting, given the strength of will that Chanel possesses in this film--and not only gave him and his family a place to live in her mansion while he composed, but also financed a production of one of his works?

The affair is a matter of rumor, though Stravinsky's artist-in-residence status at Chanel's manse did actually happen. The film traces the putative affair, imagining that Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) was present at the scandalous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring at the Th��tre des Champs-�lys�es, where catcalls, brawling, and umbrage at the piece were countered by shouts of praise--at least in this version of events. (There's some debate as to whether the crowd's displeasure was caused by Stravinsky's music or by the choreography, which was the work of Vaslav Nijinsky.)

Not until 1920 did the two actually meet, however. In this account, it's sparks from the very beginning: the sexual attraction is equalled, and maybe surpassed, by the intellectually attraction, and there's more than a hint of a power struggle going on, with Chanel determined not to allow her gender (or societal expectations of women) to hinder her primacy in business, in design, or in her affair.

The casting of Mads Mikkelsen as Stravinsky is an inspired choice. Mikkelsen has played in big features before--he was in both Casino Royale and A Quantum of Solace, and he also had a role in the recent remake of Clash of the Titans--and he stole the screen in his relatively small role in Torremolinos 73 as a porn actor. We knew he could play strong and sexy--but playing genius is something else, and Mikkelsen captures that essence, a mixture of passion, trepidation, conviction, uncertainty, and drive. His Stravinsky is a muscular man, but his artistic ability is even more formidable than his physical presence; it's a flame that draws women like Chanel, or like his wife, Katarina (Elena Morozova), who is as musically adept as Stravinsky, and unafraid of exerting editorial influence over his work.

But Katarina is not in good health; Stravinsky, by contrast, is shown here to be as fit as a bull. At one point, Katarina (who knows from the sound of her husband's interrupted piano playing that there's more than one sort of beautiful music being made in the house) tells her husband that she detects a scent of rot in the rooms that Chanel has provided the family. It's her own decaying body--but it might as well be the bonds of trust and matrimony that no longer bind her and Stravinsky.

It's a cruel irony that this is the very time when Chanel is overseeing the formulation of her famed perfume. As in other areas of her life, Chanel is persistent and precise and unwilling to settle for anything other than what she wants: a scent that is womanly and yet not too sweet; something subtle that will last for an entire evening. She wants a spell of enchantment that can be applied with a fingertip, and eventually the perfumer to whom she entrusts the project presents her with a series of vials from which to choose. Chanel selects number five--and history is made.

Kounen's direction is capable and sometimes innovative, and together with cinematographer David Ungaro he creates a film that looks like art--fitting for its subjects. NArratively, the movie has an expansive and glossy feel, but the action only moves in fits and starts: the struggles that the characters undergo are largely submerged under all the bold design elements and the film's lovely lighting. Stravinsky is contending with tidal forces of creativity and romance, and we get moments that clarify this: a drunken attack of musical turmoil at the piano, an understated and almost formal series of arguments with Katarina over his affair with Chanel.

But Chanel herself is almost a cipher. Mouglalis looks like the Chanel of this story: strong, straightforward, unrepentant. She's a force in the fashion world and she supports the arts--but we hardly see her at work, and we have little sense of what, exactly, she likes about Stravinsky. Katarina accuses her of "collecting people," and there may be some truth in that--isn't genius an aphrodisiac for some people?--but there's a deeper connection between the two that's never satisfactorily defined or explained, only emphasized by an abrupt coda that jumps forward about 50 years to show us two elderly people moving through their separate environments, but seemingly still pining. For youth? For one another? It's hard to say; the music, by now, has faded into an uneasy silence.