Juliette Binoche explores Coco Chanel's dark decisions in 'The New Look'

Juliette Binoche explores “how people behave in very dark times” by embodying a version of Coco Chanel which shows his rivalry with designer Christian Dior and his ties to the Nazis during World War II in the series 'The New Look'.

“Every actress has made her own Chanel, there is no other way to do it, but this one has a mix of her emotions with mine,” says Juliette Binoche in an interview with EFE about her character in the series. Apple TV+ which arrives on the streaming platform this Wednesday.

On Fifth Avenue and the streets of Madison and 59th in New York, the haute couture houses of Balmain, Chanel, Dior and Givenchy coexist, but in the story of screenwriter and producer Todd A. Kessler these names stop being brands and become in the human beings who changed the course of fashion in a hard time in which they all sought to survive.

“Fashion is made by specific people, and I think that knowing these stories makes you relate to them in a different way,” explains the Juliette Binoche actress.

The Apple TV+ series begins with the conference 'The Aesthetics of Fashion', which was the first fashion exhibition in the history of the Sorbonne in Paris in 1955, led by designer Christian Dior and with the return of Chanel to Paris to revive his fashion house after several years of exile in Switzerland.

The plot, which is full of jumps in time, is unleashed from the question of a young woman towards Dior who questions his role during the German occupation of France (1940 to 1944) and her answer opens the way to a story full of of chiaroscuro where staying alive was a daily struggle.

While Juliette Binoche plays a despot, haughty and brave Chanel Become a Nazi spy looking to recover her money and business, Ben Mendelsohn plays a shy and still unknown Christian Dior, subjugated to his employers and trying to get ahead and protect his rebellious sister.

“My job was not to judge her because I had to embody her. I think it is stronger to give her humanity without judging so that the public can judge if they feel like it, or understand why some of her actions were not moral,” he mentions.

Much of the research behind Kessler's project focused on Walter Schellenberg's testimony during the Nuremberg trials, which was kept secret for 40 years and which, when opened in the 1980s, revealed the names of powerful figures who were involved. involved in the Nazi regime.

Return to television

Although previously Juliette Binoche has been a television actress, He is one of the most famous figures of French cinema thanks to his participation in iconic films such as 'Trois Couleurs: Bleu' (1993) and 'Rendez-vous' (1985).

In 1997, the performer, now 59, received the Oscar for best supporting actress for the film 'The English Patient' and four years later she received a nomination for best leading actress for 'Chocolat'.

The last appearance of the Parisian in a series was in 'The Staircase' and her return to the small screen is due to the desire she had to develop a character as “complex and full of nuances” as Chanel's.

“I was interested in having the time to explore her and for her to be revealed to me in a certain way. She had a traumatizing childhood due to the war, her mother died after her father abandoned her, her sister committed suicide. I was struck by the way she handled these situations, it is a story full of contradictions,” he argues.

The ten-part series sees designers including Balmain, Dior and Lucien Lelong meeting in bars and sharing their sorrows as they transformed the fashion industry in the dark times that Europe was going through, and all of its characters are constantly plagued by feelings of guilt and morals about the decisions they had to make to stay alive.

“From this series I learned that the survival mechanism can really work against you and that you have to watch your vulnerabilities. Chanel made a strength of her vulnerability, but this strength also worked against her,” concludes Binoche.

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