You may expect, with a biographical movie about a fashion legend such as Chanel (Anna Mouglalis), to see much of her fashion but this isn’t the purpose of the movie directed by Jan Kounen. In this French production set in 1913, there are scenes that hint at her powerful place in fashion but this really looks firmly at the affair she had with the great composer Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelson).
The Russian composer is struggling financially and the affair starts when Chanel offers a home to him and his family, including his sick wife, at her villa just outside Paris. In Chanel’s gloriously stylish black and white decor home, he is able to make progress with the Rite of Spring, a ballet which controversially eventually causes a riot as some feel it is too modern for it’s time.
Chanel has a strong physical attraction for the composer and he for her. They embark on a sexual relationship with no boundaries and seemingly no conscience while Stravinsky’s wife (Elena Morozova) is but a few rooms away with her children.
We gain no real insight into what they feel for one another apart from a strong physicality but I took from it some hints. Psychologists say strong romantic relationships need to have a good mix of friendship, respect and the sexual side or else the partners will feel something is missing. With Chanel she seemed to eventually feel the respect was missing and maybe even the friendship – the result of rushing into an addictive physical interaction without even knowing how much they truly like each other as people. For Stravinsky he misses the friendship and support of his wife who understands his relationship to music more than anyone. You could argue that he may never have turned to Chanel if his wife hadn’t been ill. You feel most sorry for the wife who, though her husband still loved her, was turning to someone else for his intimate physical needs. This made her feel worthless, unattractive and isolated. Of course there was only so much of this that she could take and she felt driven to leave the situation – the rejection eventually being too much to bear no matter how much she loved him. The friendship and respect wasn’t enough to sustain her as it wouldn’t be for most. The affair itself was doomed and apparently only lasted a few months in reality.
However these are just my interpretations of their feelings and it certainly did make me think about the structure of relationships as I wrote this. What makes a happy balanced relationship? However, this is just guess-work as none of the insights were quite so direct in the film. This is one of the failings of the movie – that we have to guess and we really do not know what they felt so it makes us also feel a little dissatisfied though it is beautiful to look at and the acting is compelling.
Cherrydial 