Ever since my brother bestowed an LCD Projector upon me on semi-permanent loan, at-home movie nights have become a regular affair. With La Boite Noire only a 5 minute walk away offering such tantalizing specials as 3-for-1 Student Night on Mondays, as well as the 3-for-$13 Cinevore special available to anyone anytime, creating a cinema in my bedroom has never been so tempting or so easy.
As the sun rolls down behind the horizon every day, I begin to wonder: Which director I would like to explore? What kind of subject, style, and form have the most appeal to my mood? I love to learn by watching movies, whether it be a tutorial on YouTube or a feature-length rendition of Coco Chanel rendered timeless on the silver screen.
This month’s top picks? Coco Avant Chanel, starring the lovely Audrey Tatou: the story of Coco Chanel as a young woman before she began her empire. A logical sequel to this is Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky; the story of Chanel’s stormy romance with the controversial classical composer. Both films were directed by women, and though their tones are strikingly different, they both do a fabulous job of articulating the admiration and the difficulties encountered by mademoiselle Chanel as a result of her strong independent character. As a pair, the films go quite well together to detail the life of Gabrielle Chanel, a woman who professed that she would “never marry” and stuck to her guns despite the fact that for a woman of her time, this was very much the exception to the rule.
Chanel’s independence and captivating fashion sense made her all the more desirable in the eyes of men, who often grew bored and tired of the routines associated with wife and family. This is perhaps why men like Stravinsky were attracted to her, and willing to pursue intimate relations despite the tremendous risks associated with such illicit behavior.
Interestingly enough, I have been exploring similar themes of infidelity and complicated lust through the eyes of Woody Allen, whose films Match Point and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger both draw attention to the fact that true love and monogamy may not exactly be realistic ideals to strive for in modern-day society. Where it is nice to have the comforts of a long-term relationship, it is nearly impossible for most of us not to gaze out of our window at the woman (or man) in red who haunts our dreams and our fantasies. As Jude Law so wisely says in Match Point, “The man who said ‘I’d rather be lucky than good,’ saw deeply into life.”
I don’t think Jude Law act’s in Match Point…isn’t it Jonathan Rhys Miers??