WHATEVER THE REASONS Coco Chanel has captured the imagination of filmmakers lately, her life makes a sumptuous backdrop for unusual forays into romance and feminism, even with fashion at the periphery. Although the films are—aside from their shared protagonist—unrelated, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky begins slightly overlapping where Coco Before Chanel left off (I'm surely not the only one mentally planning a future back-to-back viewing marathon involving pajamas and champagne). The Chanel of Stravinsky is older, arch, thin and imposing, tight lipped, and demanding. She's also beautiful (more credit to actress Anna Mouglalis here than to historical accuracy) and self-possessed, honest about taking what she wants, however selfishly, and confident in her own invincibility. What she wants, according to the imagination of this film, is an affair with the controversial composer Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen).

As love affairs go, theirs is fairly chilly and unemotional, the characters at arm's length from the audience as well as each other. Quietly paced and un-bashful, most of the adulterous action plays out in Chanel's spectacular villa, an attention-demanding work of the home-decorating arts worthy of as much examination in the film as its characters. An overriding black-and-white scheme emphasizes the modernity of Chanel's tastes, with Escher-like patterns contrasting the bright peasant florals Stravinsky and his ailing wife Katarina (Yelena Morozova) are accustomed to.

One of the film's first scenes is the riot-inducing premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, a vividly rendered re-creation of the performance that captured Chanel's imagination and pointed her toward Stravinsky as a fellow artist breaking ground against tradition. It's after this that Chanel adopts the penniless musician and his family, and the two eventually carry on unremorsefully while Katarina grows helplessly weaker in an upstairs bedroom. It ends, of course, when Chanel declares it, emerging unscathed and victorious as always, going on to have at least four more affairs also worthy of being made into films, for which I eagerly await.