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Published: 05 August 2010
by DAN CARRIER

BASED on the novel by Paul Greenhalgh, this film imagines the tempestuous love affair between the designer Coco Chanel and the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. 

Coco became his patron, giving him and his family a house to live in on the outskirts of Paris while he wrote his ballet The Rite Of Spring. While it is not known for sure, there have long been rumours that Stravinsky and Chanel embarked on a wild live affair – Stravinsky’s wife was bed-ridden and weak with TB at the time.

We are introduced into this uncomfortable situation, and watch as Coco tries to push him into writing the masterpeice she thinks is lurking within him.

As a side story, we also follow, very briefly, Coco’s role in the development of the perfume that became known as Number Five. 

Every scene seems to have been laid out in symmetry, with the characters bang in the middle, with simple black and white modernism dictating in the stage sets. 

Sadly, though, for a film with a character like Stravinsky in a main role, the music is a disappointment. Apart from the occasional off-key piano chord used to show when Igor is in a bad mood, there is little of aural worth. 

And there is also a feeling of haunting intrusion, as the three main protagonists are going through some seriously personal stuff and we’re given a grandstand view: this becomes a problem because at no point do we feel we really get to know the characters. It’s as if the makers have assumed we’ve all watched the Audrey Tatou film Coco Before Chanel, released earlier this year, that told of her rise in the Parisian fashion world. 

And Stravinsky has so few lines. Still, the idea is good, but could have been executed with a little less of a dark cloud hanging over the proceedings and more pizzam.