Review 577: Marie Antoinette (2006)

 

The first thing to note when watching, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is that it's not historically acurate, any film that plays contemporary/80's music over the opening credits is riding a fine line between the modern and the traditional.

Based on Marie Antoinette: The Journey, a sympathetic biography of archduchess Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. In 1770, France, Fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia is sent by her mother to marry the Dauphin of France, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) at the Palace of Versailles. Feeling isolated in a royal court rife with scandal and intrigue, Marie Antoinette defies both royalty and commoners by living like a rock star, which serve only to seal her fate.

There's a certain scene where Antoinette breaks the fourth wall to give a different slant on her image. It also serves as a bit of meta commentary on how history remembers her and how different a person she may have been.

To quote Roger Ebert: Marie Antoinette centres on the loneliness of being female and being surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you: As time goes on, Marie is suffocated by life at Versailles. She's disliked by her husbands courtiers for being a foreigner and they blame her for being able to produce a male heir. So she endulges herself in food and shopping as a kind of coping mechanism.

A mjor hightlight of this film is the soundtrack: To the causal ear it may sound anachronistic because it consists of New Wave and post-punk. But

Kirsten Dunst is absolutely charming in the role of the doomed queen. She was coquettish but also very genuine at the same time. She expertly captures the naivety of a young who's desperately trying to please and follow the will of her Mother to unite Austria and France and she's let down because her husband is a drip. 

Unfortunately, despite clearly being portrayed as a drip, Jason Schwartzman feels miscast and out of place playing Louis XVI