ScreenWize

For a long while this film seems so full of promise and so fresh with its charmingly serene pace, exquisite costume design and minimal dialogue. We, like the 14-year-old Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) become slowly enveloped in the royal French court at Versailles, with its whispering courtiers and highly mannered conventions. But once there, the story – perhaps like the young French Queen herself – languishes in what seems like an underwritten and sometimes ponderous final movement. The film is an impressionistic journey – and a beautiful one – but one deliberately without clear destination. Those who know the intense history unfolding away from the French court in the 1780’s may understand the irony at work in the film (the lavish excesses in food and fashion were being played out as the nation plunged toward bankruptcy, starvation and revolution) but director Sophia Coppola chooses to keep the outside world away from her story, placing enormous pressure on Kirsten Dunst to carry our interest, and act as our naïve guide through Coppola’s subtle commentary on the dangers of excess.

The film covers a twenty-year period of history from the moment that the young Austrian princess is informed of her arranged marriage by her politically astute mother Empress Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull), to her forced departure from Versailles with her husband Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). At her side throughout are the Austrian Ambassador (Steve Coogan) who attempts to update her on affairs of State, and the Comtesse de Noailles (Judy Davis) who educates her in the strange and formal ways of Versailles. Between these two poles of history Coppola strings a stunningly visual portrayal of innocence marked with moments of post-modernism - particularly with the choice of music from bands like Bow Wow Wow, The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Dunst wafts through the film with delightful naivety and her slowly unfolding relationship with the equally naïve Louis (wonderfully played by Schwartzman) is where the film works best – touching us briefly with some humanity beyond the silks and serving platters. But other than this glimpse, we never really get inside the soul of our heroine. The costumes – from designer Milena Canonero (who also designed for Kubrick’s period piece Barry Lyndon and another recent Marie Antoinette story – The Affair of the Necklace) are simply stunning, but may not be enough to hold everyone’s interest for the two hours of the film.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon