Thanks to my friend John (who is finally taking his first baby steps into the world of blogs), I recently had the opportunity to attend a press screening of the Black Swan, courtesy of the lovely people at L’Oréal and Yves Saint Laurent’s fragrance La Nuit de l’Homme. What’s the connection between the fragrance and the movie, you ask? Well, there’s a several. The movie’s male lead is played by none other than French actor Vincent Cassel, who also happens to be the face of YSL’s new campaign for La Nuit de l’Homme.
Some might recall that this isn’t the first time he is fronting a campaign for the maison’s best selling fragrance; he also fronted their campaign in 2009. Very well, another connection with the movie is that the TV commercial for the fragrance was shot by none other than Darren Aronofsky – the director of Black Swan.
The perfume is spicy and masculine, but at the same time very sensual with notes of bergamot, cedar and lavender. It is definitely one of my all-time favourite men’s fragrances and I’m currently on my third bottle!
The movie itself was amazing. Not only was the story really captivating, but all the imagery surrounding it was beautiful as well. The fantastic ballerina costumes by Rodarte, or the amazing makeup by M.A.C. should be reason enough for any fashionista to want to see it. Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel and Winona Ryder all delivered amazing performances in the movie. I think this might be Natalie’s strongest role till date, and if she doesn’t get an Oscar for this role, there just is no justice!
Must admit, I didn’t quite want to watch a film with Amanda Seyfried in. This girl is too pretty to be seen as serious actress. And I think that is probably the reason of other 2 powerful actors being selected to balance out, who are Liam Neesen and Julianne Moore.
Since I was not so convinced with Amanda, I thought to read about the story line first before starting the movie. It’s a story about a woman who suspect her husband’s cheating on her after he missed his surprise birthday party she organized for him, she then went out and hired a sexy escort to seduce and proof him. However, it has gone far too complicated and brought fear and danger to the family.
It is however, not a usual story line, of which you could not have guessed what ending it really is. Yes, at the beginning it seems to follow our normal logic of how a story like this would end – she found out he’s cheating, he’s really fallen for the escort? But no…it had big U-turn half way through. And you have to find out how yourself, I’m highly recommending the movie, but can’t tell any further.
You could try to watch the movie from here. (Fade to #C5C5C5 is not responsible hosting the movie.)
Last week I went for screening of the other Chanel movie —- ‘Coco & Igor’. Indeed a powerful movie that I felt even more powerful than ‘Coco Avant Chanel’, which was wide released last year in UK. 2 Chanel movies were actually being film around similar time. But both team were really supportive to each other like one family. They would stand up for each other when unnecessary comments attacked both movies.
This movie opened up with moving snow-flake-and-arabian-like patterns and Coco was rushing to theatre after meeting her long-term lover ‘boy’. This scene was captured in ‘Coco Avant Chanel’ towards the end. She was about to experience the issonance of the score and the shocking choreography of ‘The Rite of Spring’ by Igor Stravinsky. It takes 7 years before they meet again in Paris – now Chanel is both rich and respected (and moaning for ‘boy’s accidental death), whereas Stravinsky is living in exile as a penniless refugee. There is an immediate powerful attraction and she decides to shelter Stravinsky, offering him her villa ‘Bel Respiro’ as a sanctuary for his composing, as Chanel herself begins creating the revolutionary iconic perfume No.5. Stravinsky moves in straight away, with his children and consumptive wife. And so a passionate, fiery love affair between two creative giants commence…
I felt the script and dialogue was very well considered and composed, they were short but full of psychological tricks. Here’re a few moments I’ve memorized and would like to share.
Moment 1:
After Coco and Igor re-met each other 7 years later, she made an appointment with him to meet in a museum and of course she was fashionably late… (don’t know how long) However, she walked in and laid her steady eye-attention on him. Nothing apologetic, she simply said ‘I Am Late’.
Moment 2:
She walked downstairs in the middle of night in a gorgeous silk night gown, floor length, embellished, with tiny button fastening around neck. She stared into Igor’s eyes quietly and unbuttoned gracefully and stood naked in front him…(only physical dialogue)
Moment 3:
Igor was playing piano in a ground-floor room and Chanel returned. She sat on him with her back against piano. Her skirt was lifted up showing white crochet stockings. The poor wife sitting in bed upstairs clearly noticed the piano has stopped, but could not come down to stop anything. I felt her pain, because she couldn’t do anything there. It would be even more painful situation if she physically saw. (again…only physical dialogue.)
Moment 4:
The poor wife decided to leave Igor and took all 4 children with her. At the door step of Chanel’s villa, her last word to Igor was ‘I love you’. The man didn’t return any word.
Moment 5:
After the wife’s departure, Igor saw Chanel in the garden and followed her into the woods. He wanted to kiss her and she pushed her out, once and twice…She had to refuse it. I know the woman must feel that she could predict everything from Igor and he became less interesting. He had eventually finished a masterpiece and felt exhausted and fell in bed in his dirty clothes. It was Chanel who called him up and put him into bath and later left a kiss on his forehead. I know, by that time, all Chanel could feel for Igor was caring and understanding. However the passion of love has not only slowly disappearing but also had to be forced to burry down after she read the last letter left on her bed by the wife. By this stage, it was actually the quiet wife who was seemingly weak and depended and a character completely opposite of Chanel, has finally won this moral fight. Yes, she is weak, ugly and unattractive and depended, but it somehow reminds me of a famous saying—-sometimes, the weakest power could be the strongest.
If Audrey Tautou has successfully portrayed a younger Chanel from beginning of her grand career, Anna Mouglalis in the movie, has completely sculpted up a closest image of Chanel from later stage—–who is confident, cold, passionate and graceful. She has got a most smokey French voice. Mads Mikkelsen as Igor was also a very strong character. I’ve always loved him ever since the Bond Movie ‘Casino Royale’.
Overall, it’s a very artistic movie which has a perfect flow on language using. It has started in English but slowly changed into French and Russion with english subtitle. However you could barely feel tiring from reading the lines, because as I said above, all dialogue are considerably short and well composed. I couldn’t help but put a short a comments on Facebook that night—–a very French movie, lots of shagging and little conversation.
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