In more than forty years of career, and around sixty feature films, Juliette Binoche — who is certainly one of the greatest actresses of her generation — has played more than one icon on screen, from Camille Claudel to George Sand , through Marie-Madeleine and even Penelope, that of the Odysseywhich she will play in an Uberto Pasolini film due out later this year.
This time, for the sake of the series The New Look, produced by Apple Studios, the French actress lent her features to a figure as legendary as she is controversial – that of the fashion designer Coco Chanel. “I wanted to better understand where she came from, what choices and what compromises she had made,” explains Juliette Binoche, who The duty was able to meet by videoconference. “As the story had ten episodes and filming took place over several months, I was eager to have the time to dig deeper, to get to know this woman intimately on whom everyone seems to have a different point of view. »
The series, filmed exclusively in Paris, chronicles the daily lives of the greatest fashion designers — Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and their contemporaries, including Pierre Balmain and Cristóbal Balenciaga — as they navigate the horrors of World War II. In the occupied City of Lights, Christian Dior navigates the anguish of the disappearance of his sister, captured for her involvement in the Resistance and taken to a concentration camp. Meanwhile, her rival, Chanel, is trying to breathe new life and prestige into her house, not hesitating to take highly controversial paths. Through their journeys and their rivalries, the series tells the story of the birth of modern fashion, and shows the thoughts of those who shaped the image and imagination of women.
A controversial figure
By diving into little-known moments in history, Todd A. Kessler, creator of the series, brings to the forefront the numerous controversies that damaged the career and reputation of Coco Chanel in the mid-20th century.e century.
We thus learn that the fashion designer was criticized for having agreed to collaborate with the occupier in exchange for regaining total control of her company, whose perfumery branch belonged to Jewish investors. She also had a relationship with a German diplomat, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, who convinced her to participate in a peace mission to negotiate an end to the war with Winston Churchill.
Far from wallowing in clichés, the series probes the complexity, the areas of darkness and light, the nonchalance and the convictions of this woman on whom fortune and talent smiled, despite a difficult childhood and modest means.
Juliette Binoche carried out significant research work to delve into the intimacy of Coco Chanel, reveal and embody its different facets and, above all, separate the true from the false. “She herself maintained the fiction, because she lied a lot in order to hide her origins and her traumatic childhood, she who lost her mother at the age of 12 and was therefore placed in an orphanage by her father . She struggled to camouflage this fragility, and worked on her character throughout her life by educating herself, rubbing shoulders with the greatest artists and cultivating relationships with aristocrats. She invented an existence for herself, which perhaps explains why her choices never seemed morally compromising to her. She thought she had acquired certain rights,” says the actress, visibly passionate about her subject.
Play Chanel in English
Even though the series takes place in Paris, and the majority of the characters portrayed are of French origin, the script is largely written in English. Juliette Binoche is the only actress in France to play one of the main roles. Christian Dior is played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn (The Outsider). We also find the American John Malkovich (In the shoes of John Malkovich) and the British Maisie Williams (Games of Thrones) in the credits, respectively in the roles of Lucien Lelong and Catherine Dior.
The actress had to trust her intuitions to bring Coco Chanel to life in a language other than French. “At the start, it was a little difficult to find the right rhythm. I had access to some films of her taken just before the war. She was very expressive with language, and used speech very quickly. The script wasn’t necessarily written with that in mind. So I tried to transcribe with gestures what was special about her. »
Juliette Binoche wins her bet, making her Coco Chanel a larger-than-life, eccentric character, brimming with a confidence that clashes with the austerity of war. But beneath the trappings, both sartorial and theatrical, the actress allows the fragility of a look to shine through, the doubts, the vulnerability and the wounds which have marked the artist’s journey, arousing, in this era where judgment is also easy than overwhelming, a welcome sympathy.