Film and Film

“Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky” Jan Kounen, 2009

The film begins with a first and long sequence in which a director is seen in all his talent, delivered the most, because it recreates a stage in images of the arrival of much public to the theatre, the old Theatre des Champs Elysees, which then it is filled completely, highlighting the elegance of Paris in 1913 and illustrious persons attending a premiere of music and ballet. This hectic comings and goings of angles and approaches, camera moves around a crowded theater, and the reactions of the diverse assistants, i.e., with many extras, shows a great production and a great filming, demanding a hard work, where stands the capacity of the director. This first sequence full of drama captured in images is an announcement of one can expect the film could be.

Its director, Dutchman Jan Kounen, old and always delivered to achieve maximum visual recreation, achieve that in filmic terms the movies elapses with great price in its composition, very well made games of light and backlight, very appropriate camera movements, as also their angles and approaches. As his style, which is noticeable more debugging, and retailer, but nothing else, because the plot is very precarious, and the story, as such, is something quite different.

This film revolves around the famous, wealthy fashion designer Coco Chanel, who evidently in forty years of his death, it is much that has been said, has been laid and has been denied about, in the creation of a myth reinforced by the novel from which the film comes. So the point of attraction and commercial hook for the same film is summarized in its title, headed by this monster woman, myth now, and the Russian composer; title which refers to two great figures and is presumably of ardent and rushing personalities, who held a romance that although fleeting was very passionate. The Viewer attends to observe the shock of this couple, the intensity of its delivery, its strength and vehemence to love and stop loving each other, to attend a confrontation dramatic and stormy, almost epic between this pair of lovers, or at least something like that.

However the plot says almost nothing about the subject, does not translate anything from these experiences, barely outlined, and no further development, a situation which is diluted, which becomes secondary and where the drama lies sometimes more with the conflict of the composer with his wife who begs him to end with this passion that with the sorrow and tragedy of the agitated lovers. None of this happens in the film and of course the questions appear immediately why does this narration exist if it is not about the story of lovers, the story which is a best seller; the best of this story seems rather mutilated, and not precisely by censorship.

It is known and is one of the most promoted issues of the realization that the film received support from the Chanel House, therefore, the first question that appears necessarily lead to question such support was assigned under what conditions in the defense and conservation of its founder, of the development of the myth that is not allowed to question, and even less of the young lover that it does not want to or not allowed to go into details. The screenplay is written by the same writer Chris Greenhalgh and was the adaptation of Carlo Di Boutin and the same director Jan Kounen, therefore, the debt that has the script, the story as such on these lovers and on the description, at least, of its passionate conflict is unusual. The questions will always be there and the necessary relationship with the support of the House of Chanel is inevitable.

Those true events of this pair of the Paris of the 1920s, recalls immediately, what happened almost 80 years ago in the Paris, between the writer George Sand and the famous pianist Fredéric Chopin, a couple who lived their romance and passion for several years, that was recorded in popular imagery and that, as it is expected, the film exploited already countless times, from the silent era. Now, suddenly, the film industry explores a new vein with these lovers of shorter duration in time but as it involves the myth called Coco Chanel, they try to see how far they can get. They began with a television series, and now with two feature films, one after one, on the subject in question. It will surely come more.