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"She scares me so much," a maid says as Corsage begins and cuts to a woman submerged in bathwater. She is Empress Elisabeth of Austria and, when she rises, the two maids beside the bath give her conflicting accounts of how long exactly she was able to hold her breath. The truth doesn't matter to Elisabeth (Sissi for short), just as it doesn't matter to writer-director Marie Kreutzer. Corsage is based on the real-life Austrian empress, but beyond the characters in the film, little else seems to be based in fact, and what is blends seamlessly with what isn't in what feels like a deliberate effort to make the audience question how these kinds of stories are told. Part revisionist history, part unconventional character study, Corsage is carried by Vicky Krieps' brilliant performance and its willingness to buck genre conventions in favor of a dark and dreamy fairy tale.

Corsage...

This story about “Corsage” costume designer Monika Buttinger first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage” depicts a year in the life of Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps), a 19th-century Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. As she approaches her 40th birthday, Elisabeth mounts an escalating rebellion against rules and expectations, which gives the story a distinctly modern feel.

When costume designer Monika Buttinger first read the script, she knew she wasn’t dealing with a “normal period piece,” but with something that required a different approach. “For me, it was clear that we had to work on a kind of fashionable interpretation for the actual viewers of the film,” she said. Buttinger started tinkering with a “special style” that honored both the character and the historical figure. “Elisabeth was really an influencer at her time,” she said. “She was an icon for decades,...

Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps), the historical heroine of Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, does not have it easy. When the movie opens, in 1877, she is on the verge of turning 40 years old and has feelings about it. “At the age of 40, a person begins to disperse and fade,” she says. Only, according to a too-attentive public being egged on by nosy tabloids, Elisabeth is doing the opposite of fading. Her relationship to food is, like her body, subject to public speculation. She wears a corset tightened to within an...

Corsage Review — Corsage (2022) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Marie Kreutzer and starring Vicky Krieps, Colin Morgan, Ivana Urban, Alma Hasun, Tamas Lengyel, Finnegan Oldfield, Jeanne Werner, Katharina Lorenz, Aaron Friesz, Raphael von Bargen, Manuel Rubey, Florian Teichtmeister, Regina Fritsch, Alexander Pschill, Raphael Nicholas, Oliver Rosskopf and Norman Hacker. Vicky Krieps [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Corsage (2022): Vicky Krieps Brings Intense Complexity to Her Role in Marie Kreutzer’s Intelligent Drama...

Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a starlet of 19th-century Europe, refused to have her photograph taken after she reached her mid-thirties. It’s a detail that hasn’t been copied over to Corsage, Marie Kreutzer’s tastefully anachronistic film about the Hapsburg royal. But that absence of photos as Elisabeth aged remains central to Kreutzer’s vision. Elizabeth believed beauty was her only currency, and she would do anything to preserve it. That includes, most infamously, a tightly corseted waist that measured a mere 19.5 inches.

We’ve seen many onscreen Elisabeths before. Romy Schneider, in the Fifties, starred in a television trilogy that reimagined her life as a bouncy, sweet-souled fairytale. It soon became a Christmas staple in Germany and Austria. Netflix only recently debuted its more feminist-minded take, The Empress, starring Devrim Lingnau. Many depictions offer ample time to the controversy that rocked Elisabeth’s later years when her son,...

Hinterland (Homefront) Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky Screenwriter: Hanno Pinter, Robert Buchschuwenter, Stefan Ruzowitzky Cast: Murathan Muslu, Liv Lisa Fries, Max von der Groeben, Marc Limpach, Aaron Friesz, Stipe Erceg Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 9/20/22 Opens: October 7, 2022 Critics often review […]

The post Hinterland (Homefront) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

“There is an air of quiet death in this house, and I do not like the way it smells,” Reynolds Woodcock announces over breakfast in “Phantom Thread.” Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary (“Phantom Thread” co-star Vicky Krieps) appears to feel the same way about Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, the difference being she has finally got used to its odor. It doesn’t help that, by Christmas 1887, a quiet death is exactly what “Elise,” the now-40-year-old spouse of ruler and busybody Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), seems destined for.

No chance. In the hands of Krieps and Austrian director Marie Kreutzer (who directed the Golden Bear-nominated “The Ground Beneath My Feet”), the Empress Elisabeth of “Corsage” is an irreverent, often immature, and tremendously endearing first lady with an insatiable desire to determine her own future. Having helped establish the doomed Joint Monarchy and reigned in Vienna for longer than any ruler’s wife,...

Switzerland’s Locarno Film festival has unveiled its line-up ahead of a physical 2021 edition running August 4-14. Scroll down for a list of titles.

As previously announced, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Beckett, starring John David Washington and Alicia Vikander, will open the festival with its world premiere on August 4.

Joining the movie for a screening at the fest’s main venue, the Piazza Grande, will be titles including John Swab’s Ida Red starring Frank Grillo, which will world premiere, Shawn Levy’s Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds, and several U.S. classics including Michael Mann’s Heat and James Cameron’s The Terminator.

Back in November last year, Deadline interviewed new artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, who told us about his love for popular cinema and American movies. This will mark his debut edition at the helm.

Screening in the Concorso Internazionale strand, which features international works from around the world,...