Marie Antoinette

I actually rather enjoyed the film. Beautiful art direction. Kirsten Dunst (luminously) portrays Marie Antoinette; a young soon-to-be queen, full of love and yet terribly flawed, a royal with nothing but her bloodline to offer France. The film offers a female perspective on what it must have been like to be a bargaining chip to maintain peace between 2 powerful countries. In the film, Marie Antoinette is not unlike many privileged and wealthy young people today; easily bored, constantly seeking distractions and amusements, and in desperate need of direction, attention, and affection. She is a young woman who appears to have held no real interest in politics--she simply wants to fulfill her duties as wife and mother. At heart, she is a "country girl" in many regards. She seems happiest in when in the country with nature and with children. It was insightful to see Marie Antoinette portrayed as a woman with foibles and weaknesses--in the framework of most histories of the French Revolution, she is painted as a conniving villainess. This movie offers a more human perspective on this period of time in history, and reminds the viewer that these two monarchs were just teenagers; terribly ill-equipped to manage the responsibility of ruling a country that was already deeply in debt. I appreciate the viewpoint of this film...it's a fresh portrait of the history of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The contemporary music mixed with classical reminds us that history can and will repeat itself. The films is a cautionary tale against allowing wealth-based leaders to override the needs of a struggling nation. Too much decadence pushed under the noses of the poor will only lead to a revolution.

In 1768, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is a young princess in Austria. Her mother sets her to marry the future French king Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). She is naive and inexperienced in the ways of the Versailles court. There is King Louis XV of France (Rip Torn), his mistress Madame du Barry (Asia Argento), and Comtesse de Noailles (Judy Davis). The Dauphin is distant and Marie struggles to connect with him. They are not sexual and she's under pressure to give an heir to the throne.

Sofia Coppola delivers a bright, light Marie Antoinette. She's very modern. There is some nice tension as the pressure builds for a baby. The movie fades away after that as France falls into revolution. Dunst is better as the young teen more than the older queen. The movie has the costumes but the drama isn't always there.

This movie simply has no storyline. It's like glimpses of her life in France. The scene of having meal at the same dining table repeats over and over again like 10 times. Nothing propelled a story forward. The ending was just a quick wrap up. Nothing explained.

This movie was a solid 7/10. It wasn't groundbreaking but it was entertaining, Dunst was endearing and of course very visually pleasing. I find it amusing and rather telling how critical most of the reviewers are of the director and think if. Sofia was named Simon they would not be mentioning her so much. I enjoyed it and it taught me some new things about Marie Antoinette.

Sophia Coppola really seems to know how to ruin a potentially great movie concept. Marie Antoinette is a fascinating figure in European history and one would expect the movie to account for at least a few interesting things that happened when she came to France to live with the prince. What we see is another sugarcoated Hollywood movie which is pretty much exactly like those teen highschool movies where rich young girls gossip, obsess with fashion and popularity etc. The only difference here are the costumes and the fact that not all the women in this movie are as young.

To top it off, the soundtrack...well, let me first put it this way, as a stand alone compilation, it's terrific to listen to but the way the modern tunes and songs have been incorporated in the sequences looks ill fit. It looks like a the characters have gone to a current day costume party rather than a movie of the period. Moreover, Coppola fails to draw the body language and nuances of the French culture from her actors. Not once does one get the impression that this is a story about France. As a result of bad direction and terrible writing, the performances of the actors suffer even though Kirsten Dunst does the best she could with the given material.

The director portrays Antoinette as naive and frivolous. There is no mention of her historical accomplishments or failures. Now it isn't an easy task to convincingly tell the story of a historical figure in two hours but Coppola focuses the entire two hours on Antoinette being fascinated by her riches and partying around. A competent director and writer could have done so much more with the storytelling. In the current case, only near the very end things start to move along but here too the story speeds up at such a superfast pace that the ending is extremely abrupt and contrived.

'Marie Antoinette' is like a bad birthday present that is wrapped beautifully but once unwrapped, the gift itself is far from satisfactory.