Marie Antoinette Review

"Marie Antoinette" reviews

Movie

Marie Antoinette

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-03-29 21:54:48

Rating

3.5/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

One part lavish—and revisionist—history of one of France's most reviled monarchs, one part ode to classic teen-girl-alienation of the John Hughes variety, Marie Antoinette is a surprisingly sumptuous slice of cinematic cake.

Story

The film follows the journey of the title character (Kirsten Dunst), the winsome, sweet-natured teenage archduchess of Austria, who is dispatched by her family in the late 1700s into a politically advantageous marriage to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the future king of France. While the trappings of the royal palace at Versailles are as extravagant and glamorous as any traditional historical biopic, the heart of the film is Marie Antoinette's smaller, more emotional world, as she struggles to fit in with the puzzling customs and often-stern judgment of a foreign court. She must also fulfill her duty to her own nation—namely, producing an heir to safeguard their political status, a task that proves increasingly frustrating as she romances her maddeningly reticent new husband. Much like any modern young woman in our era of airhead heiresses, she initially soothes her angst by indulging in excessive shopping sprees, wild parties and flirtations with a hunky war hero. But she also eases into her role on the throne, only to find that her starving, angry peasant subjects have taken a harsh view of the gossip surrounding her profligate behavior as they mount the French Revolution.

Acting

As a child actress who worked steadily into her teens and early twenties, Dunst has always been a fresh, sunny presence on screen in popcorn films like Bring It On, but who could also reveal an ability to access darker corners, as she did in her debut performance in Interview with the Vampire and in Sofia Coppola's directorial debut The Virgin Suicides. But after her breakthrough role in 2002's Spider-Man, most of Dunst's subsequent efforts seem to have be chosen more to build her Hollywood stardom than challenge her acting skills and, perhaps unchallenged, she delivers performances more competent than compelling. Marie Antoinette is a welcome return to a more complicated and conflicted role, and she rises to the challenge admirably with her most appealing and most affecting turn to date. Utterly capturing the queen's evolution from naïf to sophisticate, gaining wisdom and maturity from her youthful frustrations and overindulgences, Dunst makes Marie's plight utterly relatable and imbues virtually every scene of the film with a watchability that outdoes even the luxe production design.

Direction

In only her third—and most ambitious—film, writer-director Sofia Coppola continues on her hot streak. Already one of the most atmospheric and subtle helmers working in Hollywood, she not only marries her modern, dreamlike style to the opulent visuals of a historical drama, she effectively redefines Marie Antoinette in a way that any alienated, over-her-head teen of today could appreciate, while also showing just why the population at large might have considered her a monster. As Coppola is the quiet introspective daughter of a revered, famously over-the-top filmmaker, she, too, was thrust into a sophisticated world at an early age and was, with her much-panned acting turn in The Godfather, Part III, certainly misunderstood by the public, if not reviled. One is tempted to think a certain reliability applies to her success with her story. But her assured skills as a filmmaker are what really make Marie soar—even her experimental touches, such as the use of anachronistic music on the soundtrack (the Strokes, Bow Wow Wow, New Order and others appear alongside Vivaldi). It make perfect sense in context, the kind of tunes a disaffected adolescent might play in her bedroom while wondering why no one understands them. That's just the icing; the rest of Marie's delectable cake is well worth eating.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 1/2 stars.

Copyright © CinemaSource 2007.

Movie

Marie-Antoinette

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-10-12 15:00:22

Provider

MRIB

Review

You're never quite sure what to expect from Sofia Coppola, whose oeuvre seems to exist in its own parallel, dreamy universe. If 1999's The Virgin Suicides was a soft focus treatment of five suburban sisters who all mysteriously kill themselves, 2003's peerless Lost In Translation examined middle-age alienation and the improbable bond between two strangers divided by 30 years.

So the last genre you'd expect Coppola to embrace would be a period feature, like this. Thing is, though, there are two Marie Antoinettes – the one who said of the impoverished French people "Let them eat cake", and the private woman who was forced into marriage by her brutish mother and who would lose a new-born baby just as her kingdom came crashing to the floor. Coppola never seems sure which one to embrace.

The film begins as Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is being married off to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), who will take over from his grandfather, King Louis XV (Rip Torn), when he passes on. Prior to the latter's death, Coppola depicts Marie Antoinette as a kind of precursor to Paris Hilton, what with the pouting, the pet pooch and seemingly endless wardrobe. It's only in the film's last quarter that Coppola delves deeper into MA's psyche, when the poverty-stricken French people force her and Louis out of their palace, obliging Marie to look at herself anew.

Not the world's greatest history lesson, then. But as ever with Coppola the soundtrack (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Gang of Four) is superb, its dramatic air adding to the otherworldly aura that envelops the film as a whole.

Copyright © MRIB 2006.