Music + fashion = grand passion.
Dutch-born French director, Jan Kounen recently travelled to Australia to promote his beautiful Art Deco film, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. With a back catalogue including the ultra violent Dobermann, and the Shaman-injected western Blueberry, this adaptation of Chris Greenhalgh’s novel about a passionate affair between two Twentieth Century icons seems like an unusual choice for the Kounen.
"I received Coco & Igor and it was a complete opposite project for me, but it was resonating with me, really strongly, because it was completely challenging me. It’s not the universe that I knew."
Kounen was eager to take the project when he heard that Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen was attached. "I wanted to work with him, because of his Danish work, his Danish films that I love, After the Wedding, Pusher, Adam’s Apple."
But it is the character of Coco (played by Anna Mouglalis) that seems to have inspired Kounen the most, "My feeling is that she is a century ahead in terms of her vision for women. She had her own business, she had freedom, she was a feminist. She had a vision of modernity, to see ahead, to sell herself as a brand." But Kounen is quick to point out that his film shows all the shades of Coco’s character "At the beginning you she her manipulating as a dark queen, bringing the family [to her house] to get [Stravinsky], but later you see something else, it’s not black and white."
The film focuses on the summer of 1920 when Stravinsky and his family stayed at Coco’s villa, Bel Respiro. Little is known about what actually happened between the designer and composer "You know that they’ve been lovers, you know who they were, who they were psychologically. You have books, information through the music, what they feel. You have all that. But from there, the rest is invention."
And just when it sounds like Kounen has gone mainstream, his fascination with mystical matters works its way back into the discussion. "Are [Coco & Igor] around, and feeling that maybe they’d like this film or not? You know I’ve done [the documentary] Darshan about a Hindu saint, I’ve done a film about traditional medicine. I can’t help having a drift to mystical realms; but when I saw this movie [Coco & Igor] I thought absolutely not. But suddenly the mystic came back".
Kounen remembers a spooky case of coincidence with glee: "I was going in the car to Grasse, for the first day of shooting, with only Coco. I put on the radio and there was the Rite of Spring, and they say ‘and now the Rite of Spring from Igor Stravinsky’. I never hear Rite on the radio like that. I felt that the character [Stravinsky] is speaking to me - ‘You forget me!’"
Surprisingly perhaps, Kounen is most enthusiastic, when discussing his 2007 short film The Story of Panshin Beka. Made as part of the portmanteau film 8: No Time Left (which includes shorts by Gus Van Sant, Jane Campion and Wim Wenders, among others), the affecting black and white short puts the spotlight on maternal health. "I think this problem resonates with me, because my grandmother died giving birth to my mother, " Kounen explains- "and because that still happens today in some areas of the world."
Shot with the Shipibo Indian tribe, whom Kounen has been linked with for years now, it is obviously a film that he treasures "My favourite film, you can put that down, my favourite one. But I love Coco and Igor."
Published in The Brag and Beat 12/04/10
