The opening sequence sets the film's grand tone by unfolding one of the great artistic scandals in its original venue: the 1913 premiere of revolutionary composer Stravinsky's radically modernist ballet, Rite of Spring, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Seven years later, rendered penniless by the violently negative reaction to his work, Stravinsky accepts the newly successful Chanel's offer to lodge him, his wife and four children, in her new villa 'Bel Respiro' in Garches. And so begins their frenzied liaison, paralleled by revolutionary ideas.