Anna Mouglalis is the next French actress to have played Coco Chanel in the latest biopic Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. The film focuses on a more melancholic part of the designers life including her tragic love affair with composer Igor Stravinsky. Mouglalis, however, has controversially described the legendary couturier as a misogynist.

“She is recognised as a huge feminist, but most of the things she did, she did for herself and not for women in general,” said Mouglalis. “I would even push it further, thinking she was more of a misogynist than a feminist, since she only had male friends.”

Mouglalis has had first-hand experience of the goings-on at Chanel, having previously modelled for the label. The actress offered high praise for the brand.

“Chanel is one of the only fashion houses that doesn’t exploit women,” she said to WWD. Mouglalis added that for Coco, “eroticism was the little piece of skin between the glove and the sleeve.”

Karl Lagerfeld is yet to be impressed by the new film commenting that the role “has no relation to Mouglalis’ talent for other roles.” Mouglalis remains unphased.

“It’s a lot for someone who [Lagerfeld remembers] as full of humour to be shown as cold and dark,” Mouglalis remarked.

source: vogue.co.uk

Trends come and go in the world of perfumes, but the classic Chanel No. 5 is one of the few exceptions to the rule. For nearly a century, it has been synonymous with elegance and sophistication-making it an easy choice as a Luxist nominee in the best fragrance category.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel started her company in 1909 with a single Paris store. By 1913, she had expanded to the posh European resort towns of Deauville and Biarritz, France. As the winter of 1921 approached, she gave the first 100 bottles of the fragrance to her most loyal customers as a Christmas gift. The following year, Chanel No. 5 made its official debut.

After playing Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine’s biopic, Audrey Tautou will star in Claude Miller’s next film, “Therese B.,” an adaptation of Francois Mauriac’s novel.

The 1920-set drama follows Therese Desqueyroux, a free-spirited but unhappily married woman who struggles to free herself from social pressures and the boredom of suburban life.

TF1 Intl. has picked up international sales and will launch pre-sales at Cannes’ film market.

The $12.7 million costumer is produced by Yves Marmion’s outfit UGC-YM. Lensing will start in 2011. UGC will handle the French theatrical release.

Tautou’s previous film, “Coco Before Chanel,” was last year’s top French-language export, taking more than $36.5 million at the international B.O. outside the U.S.

TF1 Intl. has also taken foreign sales rights to Sarah Polley’s second feature, “Take This Waltz,” a dramedy starring Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen. Lensing is set to kick off in July in Toronto. Pic is co-produced by Polley and Susan Cavan’s Accent Entertainment, in association with Telefilm Canada. Mongrel Media will handle the Canadian distribution.

Polley’s feature helming debut, “Away From Her,” earned two Oscar noms.

At Cannes, the French sales company will also hold market preems for Kristin Scott Thomas starrer “Love Crime,” a sexy thriller set in the corporate world; Wall Street-set “Trader Games,” starring French thesp Gilles Lellouche; Yann Gozlan’s “Caged”; and Jacques Malaterre’s “Ao, the Last Neanderthal.”

article from independent.co.uk:

She may never have played for Manchester United but she does now have something in common with Eric Cantona.

 

Audrey Tautou, the most successful and highest paid of a new generation of French cinema actresses, followed Le Grand Eric last week by becoming the latest of a series of high-profile transfers from the French screen to the stage.

Tautou, 33, who was projected to world stardom by her roles in Amélie (2000) and The Da Vinci Code (2006), has made her theatrical debut in Paris in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Audrey comfortably outscored Eric. Cantona received, at most, polite reviews last month for his gutsy, but sometimes inaudible performances, just off the Champs-Elysées, as a dying man trapped in the ruins of a supermarket. Tautou has received rave reviews for her performance as Nora Helmer, a young wife who tries to escape from the suffocation of a conventional, 19th-century bourgeois marriage. The theatre critic of Le Parisien said that she was “irresistible”.

Both Cantona and Tautou are part of a wider emigration from French cinema to theatre, as the Paris stage tries to recover from a disappointing, crisis-deflated 2009. Another recruit has been the actress Isabelle Huppert, who is playing Blanche Dubois in Un Tramway, a loose interpretation of the Ten-nessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

In April, the British film director Sam Mendes will make his first excursion into French theatre when he directs two Shakespeare plays in Paris, The Tempest and As You Like It.

Audrey Tautou knew that she would be given no quarter by French theatre critics if she failed to make the leap on to the stage. “Everyone is waiting for me to fall on my face, but I don’t care,” she told the newspaper Le Figaro.

The role of Nora in A Doll’s House might have been written for Tautou. In her cinema career, she has progressed from her early roles as a lovable, naive, fragile and comical young woman (such as Amélie). She made a much-praised appearance last year as a tortured and not always likeable Coco Chanel in a movie about the fashion designer’s early life. For her performance in Coco Avant Chanel (Coco before Chanel), Tautou has been nominated for a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar.

In A Doll’s House (written in 1879), her character, Nora, makes a similar progression from a childlike wife, patronised by her husband, to a tortured and would-be liberated adult woman. The production at the Théâtre de la Madeleine until 10 June, directed by Michel Fau, is played for laughs in the first half – somewhat unusually but with great success.

Le Parisien wrote: “Stuffed like a sweet into a sky-blue dress, wrapped around with a big bow, Audrey Tau-tou makes a perfect doll. She talks like a little girl, she lisps, she skips and overdoes the cheerfulness to play up to her husband… As the play progresses, her face becomes more serious, more adult, more that of a woman.”

Tautou said that, as a girl, she had dreamed of appearing on the stage “but life led me in another direction”.

“I was so spoiled by my cinema career for so long that I hardly dared to ask to go on stage.”

Asked to describe the difference between the two forms of acting, she said: “In the cinema, I sink into my characters very quickly, which leaves you little chance to play around. In the theatre, it’s the opposite. You start by playing with the role and, bit by bit, you feel close to your character.

“You build things, you try things, you rub them out again. It’s scary but great fun.”

Winston, who requested to work with the actress, has topped the French charts with his latest album Hobo.

The musician said he had a lot of fun working on the music video I Love your Smile, which is released in the UK on 22 February.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO!

The British television presenter, who moved to New York this year to work for MTV, topped Vogue magazine’s Best Dressed of 2009, with French actress Audrey Tautou coming in second.

Alexa is a well-known lover of British fashion labels, often wearing Burberry and Mulberry and previously modelling for Vivienne Westwood.

Commenting on their decision to crown Alexa best dressed, Vogue said: “She won over the US style pundits with her quirky style and kept us on side by staying true to the formula that won her our approval in the first place.”

Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker came third in the list, followed by X Factor judges Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue in fourth and fifth place.

Kate Moss came in the list at 10th, just ahead of Lady Gaga in 11th. Other notable inclusions include Michelle Obama, Anna Friel and Beth Ditto.

Vogue’s Best Dressed of 2009: 

1. Alexa Chung
2. Audrey Tautou
3. Sarah Jessica Parker
4. Cheryl Cole
5. Dannii Minogue
6. Emma Watson
7. Sienna Miller
8. Diane Kruger
9. Freida Pinto
10. Kate Moss
11. Lady Gaga
12. Lily Donaldson
13. Leighton Meester
14. Michelle Obama
15. Angelina Jolie
16. Georgia May Jagger
17. Anna Friel
18. Olivia Palermo
19. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
20. Beth Ditto

To celebrate the release of the most stylish film of the year, Coco Before Chanel, out on DVD and blu ray on November 23, we’ve joined forces with Optimum Home Entertainment to give 10 lucky winners the chance to win a copy of the DVD or blu ray!

Coco Before Chanel stars Audrey Tautou and tells the story of Gabrielle Chanel, who started her life as a headstrong orphan and following an extraordinary journey became the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman.

For your chance of to win a copy of this stunning film just in time for Christmas, send your name and contact details to comps@fabulousmag.co.uk Don’t forget to include ‘Coco Before Chanel’ in the subject line. Please state in your entry if you would like your prize to be the DVD or blu ray version.

For more information visit www.cocobeforechanel.co.uk

Competition closes midnight on November 28, 2009. Full Fabulous terms and conditions apply.

Open to UK residents only. Entrants must be 18 and over. No alternative prize is available if unsuitable.