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Created Jun 26, 2010 12:48PM PST • Edited Aug 02, 2014 02:36AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   Visually scintillating, musically avant-garde, dramatically turgid: This biopic of two cultural giants goes down like Brussels sprouts instead of foie gras. IOW, it takes effort to work through the two hour running time, when it should feel like savoring a rich delicacy. Pity, since Coco & Igor were the most fashionable couple imaginable, yet the movie paints them as dreary grinds.

   The great Chanel herself couldn’t dress up this much brooding.

   Coco & Igor – the movie – can be seen as a sequel to the generally superior Coco Before Chanel, albeit that one starred Audrey Tautou as Coco, while this one stars Anna Mouglalis. The iconic designer’s personality: mercurial and brusque in both. Not surprising, since design-driven entrepreneurs like her – think Steve Jobs today – create desperately desirable products with little regard for the personal relationships they brutalize along the way.

   Those fascinated by either member of this legendary couple should see Coco & Igor.

   It’s a ticket to fashion victimization for everyone else.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   Mads Mikkelsen, a great actor, was merely good here as tortured musical artist Igor Stravinsky.

   Anna Mouglalis’ performance as Coco Chanel was so internal as to be inert.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Awkward transitions between scenes and other directorial flaws mar the film. Still, the visualization of the famous “riot” that accompanied Stravinsky’s premiere of The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and of Coco Chanel in her prime are worth the price of the ticket.

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

13. Music Great 4.0

    The composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said of one passage from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, “That page is sixty years old, but it’s never been topped for sophisticated handling of primitive rhythms…”, and of the work as a whole, “…it’s also got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name.” (Source: Wikipedia)

    Thus did Igor Stravinsky become one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, according to Time magazine. Also on that august list: Coco Chanel.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Chanel freaks have to see this movie. It reeks of her design aesthetic: focus on fabric, heavy use of black and white, simplicity, clean lines. It even includes a nearly pornographic side trip into the creation of Chanel No. 5, including how Marilyn Monroe’s favorite fragrence got its name.

    Viewing Chanel’s circa 1920s Paris flagship – with her already iconic Chanel logotype on the awnings – proves that great design never gets old.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    Much strenuous coupling.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    No historical certainty exists about whether Coco & Igor had an affair, though she did put him and his family up at her country house. Given her proclivities for taking desirable married men as lovers, and his reputation as a notorious philanderer, it seems likely.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0