More Than a Queen

Marie Antoinette is perhaps best remembered for her legendary (and, some modern historians say, exaggerated) excesses. I don’t suppose this is entirely true, but from the looks of Marie Antoinette I believe that Academy Award winning writer and director Sofia Coppola remembers the last Queen of France as quite the rock star.

Coppola’s liberated take on the life of “l'autrichienne” 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 – starring Kirsten Dunst in the title role and Jason Schwartzman as King Louis XVI – is a film of whimsy.

It is a highly stylized (i.e., spectacularly beautiful) interpretation of the monarch’s life – by way of a hipster Fabulous Life Of…, featuring a soundtrack of, among others, Bow Wow Wow, the New Order, and Siouxsie & the Banshees.

According to what Dunst told Conan O’Brien a couple of nights ago, this choice was made as a way to bridge the period the film covers with the sentiment the visuals and the music would evoke among audience members.

Obviously, the mood of the film is anything but typical: in this 18th-century France, Marie Antoinette and Co. speak and party as if they lived in the Hollywood Hills, not Versailles (OK…it’s not that bad, but no one affects a Period Film Accent). Oh, and the queen also sports pink hair and owns a pair of blue Converse sneakers.

All of Coppola’s choices work, though. I didn’t love them, but I enjoyed them and recognize their merit because, for the most part, they worked with the storytelling.

Marie Antoinette takes on a rather sympathetic view of the queen's life, as the 14-year-old arrived in Versailles after marrying 15-year-old King Louis XVI and learned to cope with the pressure of her duties. For the first two acts of the film, we see Marie Antoinette grow up, but not grow up. She tames her ways some after becoming a mother, but her fate is sealed (a life of unabashed indulgences would get her guillotined).

I never knew much about what the queen stood for (other than living it up), and I can’t say Coppola did much to inform me of anything new – and I sort of hoped she would. I know Marie Antoinette was more than just a queen, but what exactly je ne sais pas.

My Rating ***

Photo: Columbia Pictures.