Let Them…Watch the Film

If there is one film that hipsters are secretly looking forward to watching this fall – in spite of the mixed welcome it received at the Cannes Film Festival last May – that film is Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

The Lost in Translation writer and director has crafted a whimsically liberated take on the life of the Austrian archduchess who married into the French royal family in 1770 and was imprisoned and beheaded when the monarchy was overthrown in the French Revolution 20 years later.

Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is based upon a historical biography by Lady Antonia Fraser, and is expected to take the same sympathetic view of the queen's life as was presented in Fraser's biography.

The film stars The Virgin Suicides’ Kirsten Dunst in the title role (Jason Schwartzman co-stars as King Louis XVI), and its soundtrack features songs by the New Wave and Siouxsie & the Banshees.

Oh, and in this 18th-century France, Marie Antoinette sports pink hair and owns a pair of blue Converse sneakers.

In several recent interviews, the filmmaker has suggested that her highly stylized interpretation is very modern in order to humanize the historical figures involved. “It is not a lesson of history,” Coppola has said. “It is an interpretation documented, but carried by my desire for covering the subject differently.”

Et comme ça, I declare, le film arrive Oct. 20.

Photo: Columbia Pictures.