Fridae

Both Coco avec Chanel and its thematic sequel, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, seem to stop time just before the legendary couturier's affair with a Nazi officer and spy. Without even touching on the juiciest episode in her life, Coco avec Chanel seemed more like a tease of a film, but would Chanel’s affair with a Russian composer in exile be enough to hold our attention this time?

Chris Greenhalgh, the author of the Chanel novel, seems to think so, and has made an adaptation of his own work. The premise is that sparks really flew between these two great iconoclastic artists who occupied the avant garde position in their respective fields – Chanel for revolutionising women’s fashion, Stravinsky for causing a riot in a respectable Parisian theatre with his outrageous composition, The Rites of Spring.

That she was in perpetual mourning for her first love, or that he was happily and dutifully married were both beside the point during their torrid affair, which the film chronicles from its start to end. That he was invited with his wife and children (who all wise up to the game early on) to stay at her apartments where the wooing took place is just icing on the cake.

Shot on location at Coco Chanel’s actual apartments in rue Cambon, the lavish art deco interiors serve as a stage for the slow, even emotionally sadistic game of seduction between Chanel and Stravinsky. It is the therapist’s couch for the complicated emotional and psychological transaction between two egos. It is the crucible for their greatest works (Chanel no. 5 for her, Symphonies for Wind Instruments and Five Easy Pieces for him). It is also the witness to their momentous contest of wills, and the resting place of their love affair when it runs its inevitable course.

Chanel & Stravinsky may very well be a conventional telling of a tempestuous love affair, but it is brilliantly designed with every frame a moment of art – especially its reenactment of the first act of the Rites of Spring, which bookends this beautiful film.