Marie Antoinette

Sofia Coppola rivets on the singular experience of a vilified royal. By Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" opens with a shot of the last queen of France reclining on a chaise while a maid tends to her feet, surrounded by a parapet of pastries. On the soundtrack, the 1980s post-punk band Gang of Four belts out its class-baiting, anti-consumerist anthem, "Natural's Not in It." ("The problem of leisure / what to do for pleasure," it goes.) A confection herself, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) selects a pastel-colored macaroon from a tray and takes a nibble. The whole time she's gazing saucily at the camera as if to ask if we'd like to make something of it. Maybe we would.

It's funny, when it's put to you this way, how much of the lore surrounding Marie Antoinette is dessert-related. Combine the cream-puff fashion and design sense, the infamous (and apocryphal) cake quip and the sweet retaliatory indulgence of her demise, and you get a clever, visually gorgeous theme that's both emblematic of an unfathomable life and somehow weirdly familiar.

"Marie Antoinette" gives a wide berth to the conventions of period dramas, especially their time-capsule remove, and instead tries to mainline the singular personal experience of the arch-villainess of French history (and freedom history, for that matter). The result is a startlingly original and beautiful pop reverie that comes very close to being transcendent.

Since the movie's premiere at Cannes, where legend has it was met with a chorus of boos (who was in the audience, Robespierre?), the reaction to the movie has been polarized. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot to big-budget, star-studded movies that look like Hollywood but feel like art-punk. The movie was inspired by Antonia Fraser's biography "Marie Antoinette: The Journey," a compassionate and thorough account (or so I understand) of the monarch's life. But Coppola is less interested in setting the historical record straight than in making an emotional connection to a misunderstood young girl whose coming-of-age took place under conditions familiar to a pampered zoo animal.

The youngest daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria, a 14-year-old Marie Antoinette was shipped off to Versailles to marry the dauphin of France, thereby securing a fragile Franco-Austrian peace. Her mother (played by an imposing Marianne Faithfull) warns that the French court is not like the Austrian, and she's not kidding.

From the moment the soon-to-be dauphine steps onto French soil, she finds herself trapped in a funhouse of bizarre protocol. From the ritual handing-off ceremony where her new chaperone, the Comtesse de Noailles (Judy Davis), rids her of every last scrap of her Austrian past — including her clothes and her puppy — almost to the day she and her husband, Louis XVI, get packed off to Paris by an angry mob, Marie Antoinette's life was at once cloistered and open to the public. The massive spectacle of her quickie wedding to the future king (played by Jason Schwartzman) is rivaled only by her well-attended wedding night, which is kicked off by a bed-consecration ceremony to which le tout Versailles apparently has ringside seats. This, unfortunately for Marie, is about as freaky as it gets. The marriage remains unconsummated for seven years — a fact of which everyone, her mother included, is mortifyingly well apprised.

So begins a lonely, lost Marie Antoinette's transformation from dutiful, pliable daughter to party girl and eventual tabloid whipping post. (Pamphlets printed on illegal presses in Paris routinely portrayed her as anation-bankrupting hussy.) Trapped and powerless, she soldiers through the marriage and succumbs to the bizarre rituals and internecine rivalries of the court until the sudden death of the lusty and dynamic Louis XV (Rip Torn) grants the teenage couple the run of the country, at which point the queen begins to close ranks.

What with the best-friend entourage (Mary Nighy as the Princesse Lamballe and Rose Byrne as the Duchesse de Polignac), the vindictive rival (Asia Argento as the infamous Du Barry), the gossipy hangers-on (Molly Shannon and Shirley Henderson as Aunt Victoire and Aunt Sophie), the limitless credit, shopping addiction, round-the-clock partying, reckless gambling and public dissection of her love life, Marie Antoinette was the original teenage celebutante princess. And who better to empathize — and feel at home in the milieu — than Coppola? A style icon and member of Hollywood royalty herself, she slips easily into Marie Antoinette's beautiful, unbelievably whimsical shoes (which were designed for the movie by Manolo Blahnik), hooking into the soundtrack of her teenage years to impart the experience. Incidentally, and really quite beautifully, that particular period in pop corresponds with the transition from post-punk to New Wave to New Romanticism; that is to say, from yawping social criticism to desolation to ironic baroque decadence.

Coppola has a soft spot for characters who live their lives at once cut off from and exposed to the world. And she captures the gilded-cage experience, in all its romantic decadence, like nobody else. The movie is at its strongest when it focuses on Marie Antoinette's private, sensual world, which — as she drifts into her much-mocked Rousseau-inspired pastoral phase, in which she attempts, in her inimitably artificial way, to connect with her natural self — becomes ever more abstract and cut off from reality. Dunst's sleepy, detached quality is perfectly suited to the character. What Marie Antoinette wants is to lose herself in a dream.

Coppola empathizes with the queen's private suffering as well as with her detachment but recognizes this detachment as dangerous. At the beginning of the movie, Marie Antoinette is 14. At the end she's 34. The country is deeply in debt, bankrupted by excess and a foreign war (the American Revolution) it can't afford. Meanwhile, the queen has been trying to find herself through shopping.

This feels not so much like a warning as a melancholy and resigned realization — which is interesting for a movie that aligns itself so closely with punk rebellion. Toward the end, I found myself waiting for clues to the coming eruption of reality. But when it finally comes, it feels cursory. Hermetically sealed inside Marie Antoinette's world, you don't see it coming, and you don't know what to make of it when it arrives. The hungry mob shows up waving pitchforks, and you half wonder if perhaps they might like a piece of cake.

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Another critic Different style. Different point of view.
Have you ever wondered what Paris Hilton would be like as the Queen of France? ‘Marie Antoinette’ dares to bore us with this question.

Sofia Coppola’s third film was booed at Cannes and, for the second time regarding Marie Antoinette, the French were right.

‘Marie Antoinette’ starts out with the promise of skewering life in the royal court. In 1758, Austria and France formed a treaty by marrying the teenaged Marie Antoinette to the equally young and inexperienced Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman).
The fact that the integrity of this treaty rests on Marie getting pregnant is ludicrous because it’s true. Coppola has good fun at the expense of all the pomp, circumstance and nonsensical tradition.

Consider the opening moments where a dressing tent is pitched on the borders of the two countries. Young Marie enters from the Austrian side, is made to shed all of her possessions and replace them with their French made equivalents. Only then is she fit to come out the other side, truly a Frenchwoman now.

Even eating with her boy-husband or being dressed in the morning by her royal sisters in order of their rank & privilege is well played for all its ridiculousness.Then something annoying happens. ‘Marie Antoinette’ loses all sense of story and commentary and devolves into a teenage girl’s diary… “My Summer At Versailles”.

It’s one gossip tale after another. Marie’s all night slumber parties. Her shopping sprees. Hot boys. Hey, isn’t Marie married to the King of France? Don’t get your hopes up. The tantalizing tidbits of Marie’s affair, like most gossip, go absolutely nowhere.

Somewhere close to the 2 hour mark, Coppola remembers there’s some history to address. The peasants are revolting. The shallow queen develops a sense of duty out of nowhere and decides to stand by her king. Why? Who cares? Towards the end of ‘Marie Antoinette’, you’ll be praying for the guillotine.

Now someone from the ‘Marie Antoinette’ camp will probably counter my critique by saying, “But that’s the point, Frank. Marie Antoinette is supposed to seem selfish and shallow. That’s why she sparked the French Revolution.” This defense would work if Coppola didn’t seem so tickled by Marie’s flights of excess.

Kirsten Dunst’s performance is equally enamored with itself. Dunst only manages one look of coyness throughout her starring vehicle. Her “I’m so totally fabulous” smirk, like the constant nothingness happening in the script, gets old very quickly.

As for the supporting players, the hodge podge of casting is more fascinating than any one performance. Where else can you see Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Molly Shannon, Asia Argento and Steve Coogan all in the same film?

Much has been made of the use of modern music in ‘Marie Antoinette’. Coppola wants to paint Marie as a free spirit in a gilded cage. The rock tunes are the sounds of her rebellion. It’s a simple yet uninspired conceit that could have gone someplace interesting. Don’t expect it to (unless you think Bow Wow Wow’s “I Like Candy” is some kind of anthem).

‘Marie Antoinette’ could be a significant misstep for Coppola, especially if it means the vapid socialite of her youth has returned.

You see, there are two Sofia Coppolas. There’s the poor little debutante clad in Prada giggling with girlfriends at Nobu. There’s also the Sofia who continued the family legacy of fine filmmaking with ‘Lost In Translation’ and ‘The Virgin Suicides.’

The former Sofia is the one who co-wrote ‘Life Without Zoe.’ That was the dull middle section of her dad’s ‘New York Stories.’You know, the one with a precocious 12 year old rich girl attending posh kid’s parties in Manhattan? It’s okay if you don’t remember. ‘Marie Antoinette’ will probably fade from memory just as easily.

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Another Critic - A Doomed Queen, Waiting for a Story
It's all about the cake. In the first shot of Sofia Coppola's new movie, Kirsten Dunst looks straight at the camera and dips her finger into some frosting. There's the famous "let them eat..." line, and Coppola's queen gets to deny it first and say it, too. Early on, the Austrian-born Marie Antoinette is likened to apple strudel, later on a courtier can be heard to remark: "she looks like a piece of cake." It's the perfect metaphor for this superficial, messy confection of a movie.
Sofia Coppola's follow-up to Lost in Translation once again features an adorable young woman in strange surroundings, and there is karaoke--except this time it's baroque (baroquaoke?). Unfortunately, there's nothing nearly as sweet and personal as the relationship between Scarlett Johannson and Bill Murray that anchored Lost in Translation. The same ubercool hipster soundtrack is in effect, but since the synth pop alternates with period music, it only creates more distance to the characters.

Marie Antoinette was filmed on location, and on first glance, its surface is certainly appealing. In lavish outfits, Kirsten Dunst ambles through Versailles, engages in some mild intrigue, throws parties, tries on shoes, and feeds her lap dogs, waiting, like us, for some sort of story.

That story is provided, for a while, by Marie Antoinette's quest to conceive an heir. Much rides on this because it will cement the Franco-Austrian alliance her arranged marriage to Louis XVI created. But the film never quite explains why Louis (Jason Schwartzman) won't deflower his bride. In absurd bedroom scenes that will seem especially prudish once John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus is released, the king half-heartedly climbs on top of his queen only to roll off again with a sigh. Finally, all it takes to resolve this narrative arc is a good talking to by Marie Antoinette's brother (Danny Huston), and this is when the film begins to flounder in earnest.
Jason Schwartzman's role, in particular, doesn't add up. He plays the bedraggled, disinterested monarch as a farcical buffoon, until, in the final minutes of the movie, we're suddenly asked to feel for him. Nothing Louis or Marie Antoinette do or say seems to have any connection to the way they meet their end--history is a forgone conclusion that has little to do with anybody's actions. Coppola goes through the motions of the biopic: coronation, check, mother's death, check, death of child, check, storming of the Bastille, check--until there's nowhere left to go but the guillotine.

There are some amusing moments along the way, but Marie Antoinette is caught up within the bubble of decadence it describes. There's plenty of cake and champagne, but there is precious little news about aristocracy, wealth, history, celebrity, pleasure, revolution, or anything else. When the people of France finally come for her, they arrive as noise, and finally we see an undistinguished mob wielding pitchforks and torches. Marie Antoinette leaves Versailles the way she arrived: oblivious.

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Based on Antonia Fraser's book about the ill-fated Archduchess of Austria and later Queen of France, 'Marie Antoinette' tells the story of the most misunderstood and abused woman in history, from her birth in Imperial Austria to her later life in France.