Syl The actress who played Coco Chanel in this film is much different than the Coco Chanel film. Of course, all actresses including Anna Mag here offer something to the complex legend and fashion pioneering icon Coco Chanel. By 1913, she's successful and independent. By 1920, she's alone and lonely after the loss of Boyd Capel which I wished that they explained better in the film. He died in a car accident on his way back to her. They had a torrid love affair. Anyway, Coco is enchanted by Igor Stravinsky, a Russian musical genius, who is living in a hotel with his wife and family after the Russian revolution. She sees a kindred spirit in him as an artist herself. Her Coco is lot less affectionate than one might imagine. She's as much a mystery as Igor is to us. Both are artistic geniuses with hers in fashion and his in music. She offers her country home to help Igor and his family back on his feet. At first, she had noble intentions of helping another artist but the two get swept up in the affair. Maybe Igor feels obligated towards Coco. This film may have been more realistic. Igor is played Mik Mikaalsen. Both actor and actress who play the title roles are unfamiliar to me. I enjoyed watching the making of it to understand it. It's a dark film at times maybe too realistic as well.

Dharmendra Singh Anyone who presumed that this film would be a follow-on from 'Coco before Chanel', Anne Fontaine's endearing, rags-to-riches depiction of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, would be mistaken. This film is director Jan Kounen's attempt to portray Coco how she really was: a mean-spirited, conceited femme fatale.Only the avant-garde artistry of Igor Stravinsky's music is enough to mollify Coco (Anna Mouglalis). The Russian composer's controversial work repels most for being too audacious and violent, but it entrances her, and after the Russian revolution leaves Igor and his family penniless, Coco invites them to live with her. Igor accepts and thus begins a cataclysmic affair.What begins as a 'Remains of the Day'-type attraction – where Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson were at pains to disclose their true feelings for each other and could only do so through knowing glances – very quickly descends into a sex-crazed love affair rivalling the one in 'Last Tango in Paris'.A subject you can usually trust French filmmakers with, however, what's missing from the plentiful love scenes between the two is, frankly, love. In fact, their entire relationship is rather curious. It's redolent of the relationship a drug addict has with drugs: It's the feeling the substance gives that's sacrosanct, not the substance itself.I was unmoved by what I believed should have been an intense performance for the part of Igor (Mads Mikkelsen). It is staid and lacklustre, interrupted by the occasional paroxysm when he is writing or playing music. The filming of Stravinsky's seminal piece, 'The Rite of Spring' in the grand Champs-Élysées theatre (as in actuality) is very impressive: the suspense, drama and sheer creepiness convince you that you are seeing the spectacle for real.It may be reasonably assumed that Coco was purely a product of her insular background - provincial, orphaned, raised by nuns - but she is never worthy of pity. The only person who deserves this is Igor's wife, Katherine (Yelena Morozova). Her characterisation of a powerless woman who sees her husband slip away from her inch by inch is so full of pathos that it leaves you contemplating whether to buy a bottle of Chanel No. 5 ever again.For all her brutality, though, there's a wonderfully dainty scene where she formulates her signature fragrance. As with everything else, she's very pernickety and it's only after playing Goldilocks that she arrives at the correct blend of the 80 ingredients.Asked if she ever felt guilty for her deeds, Coco simply says 'No' unbearably cavalierly, which left me wondering: If she never had any humanity for herself, why should we have any for her?www.scottishreview.net

James Hitchcock It is strange how two otherwise unrelated films on the same topic can sometimes suddenly appear within a short time of one another. In 1960, for example, there were two filmed biographies of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose life had never previously been the subject of a film, and in the early seventies two separate studios were, quite by chance, working on disaster movies about skyscrapers on fire. When they discovered the coincidence they decided to join forces and produce the film now known as "The Towering Inferno"."Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" is another example of the same phenomenon. It was one of two French biopics of the fashion designer Coco Chanel to come out in 2009, the other being "Coco avant Chanel". It deals with the supposed affair between Chanel and the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. (The two were certainly friends, but whether they actually had a sexual liaison is open to question).The film opens in Paris in 1913 with the notorious first performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring". Although the French have a reputation for being artistically progressive (they did, after all, contribute the word "avant-garde" to the English language), they did not live up to that reputation on this occasion, rioting in protest against what they saw as the work's aggressive modernism. Stravinsky was lucky that his composition was first performed before a Parisian audience, as their reaction caused a "succes de scandale" and helped create his reputation as one of the founding fathers of modern music. Had the premiere taken place in London, the British audience would doubtless have sat through the performance with a stiff upper lip, delivered some polite if uncomprehending applause at the end and then retired to the nearest pub to pontificate on what a crashing bore the whole thing had been and how that Russian fellow whatever-his-name-is was not a patch on our own dear Edward Elgar. The work itself would have been quietly forgotten.The action then leaps over the First World War to 1920. Chanel's fashion business is flourishing and she is branching out into perfumery. Stravinsky, who despite his artistic radicalism was something of a political conservative, is now an anti-Communist refugee from the Russian Revolution. She invites him to live in her villa outside Paris, along with his wife and children, and the rest of the film traces the development of their alleged affair.Like that Paris audience in 1913, French film-makers can often belie their country's reputation for bold artistic experimentation. British film critics sometimes assume that "heritage cinema" is something unique to our own conservative, nostalgia-obsessed little island, but greater familiarity with the French cinema would reassure them that our friends across the Channel can be just as nostalgic as we can. "Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" is a case in point. (Its director Jan Kounen is Dutch by birth, but most of his work has been done in France). It is a French film of a type with which we are familiar in Britain; a historical romance about the artistic or well-to-do classes, set in a country house complete with a lovingly detailed recreation of the décor and costumes of the period. What might be called Laura Ashley cinema.Certainly, the opening scenes have plenty of vigour and energy, but then it would be difficult to recreate "The Rite of Spring" without being vigorous and energetic. This initial energy, however, is dissipated as the film progresses, and in the second half it becomes little more than the cinematic equivalent of an "adultery in Hampstead" novel- all done very tastefully, but leisurely, slow-moving and rather dull. A film about love among the artistic bourgeoisie of the 1920s needs to offer something new and exciting if it is not to seem over-familiar, and this one, frankly, has little to offer in that department. 5/10

richard-1787 This movie is often very beautiful to look at. Some of the camera-work is innovative, other times it references famous scenes in previous movies. If this were a silent picture, these things would stand out more and make for a more enjoyable experience.Because, sadly, the movie is a bore.It recounts the story of two not particularly attractive and certainly not pleasant individuals who have a lot of very uninteresting and apparently passionless sex that is quite clearly but not at all erotically filmed. There they are again, in bed, completely unclothed, going at it, and I found myself wondering if I should make popcorn. They are presented as they evidently were: two individuals intensely devoted to their work, work that took a lot of solitary creation. When they have sex, it is as if Stravinsky does it, quite methodically, in order to get rid of his urges - since he apparently can't have sex with his quietly suffering wife anymore, because of her illness - so that he can get back to his composing. That may be what the movie wanted to suggest. But that doesn't make for a very interesting movie. We never see much of any relationship between him and Chanel, just the sex.It took me three days to get through the whole thing. I just couldn't keep watching for but so long at a stretch, and only finished it so that I hadn't totally wasted my money on renting it."Coco before Chanel" shows that Chanel could be interesting. I'm willing to believe that Stravinsky could be interesting too. But I didn't get that from this movie. We see Chanel's involvement in the creation of Chanel No. 5, but there's no joy in it, so we don't get excited about it either.We get even less involved in Stravinsky's composition.It looks like a Masterpiece Theater where all the money went into the production values and nothing into the script. When you're dealing with two intellectual persons for an audience who, given the subject matter, is likely to be fairly intellectual themselves, this is not a good thing.