A Two Hour Beautiful Bore

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2006)

This film starts off well enough with the great Marianne Faithful (in a wonderfully off-beat role, to be sure) as the Empress Maria Teresa of Austria sending her 14 year-old daughter, Marie Antoinette, off to France to marry the 15 year-old dauphin, Louis Auguste.
But from there it's unfortunately downhill as far as this movie goes. The film quickly dissolves into a thick mush-like bog of beautiful nothingness, the likes of which I've never seen. Exquisitely beautiful Kirsten Dunst (who absolutely looks the part) stands around for most of the two hours of the film dressed up in the most gorgeous period clothes looking more like she's at a Vanity Fair shoot rather than acting in a major motion picture. I can't help but wonder if, with the right direction, Dunst might have pulled it off. But, evidently, Sofia Coppola is not the director to give Dunst the right direction. Coppola inexplicably fills the soundtrack with 1980's post-modern music updating (or juxtaposing, one is never sure) the 18th Century French court at Versailles. This has the undesired effect of further exacerbating the film's deficiencies and flaws.
I thought it was cool how Coppola was able to obtain permission to shoot at Versailles and the Petit Trianon--both places where the real Marie Antoinette spent much of her life as Queen of France. But, unfortunately, these two structures have the odd effect of dwarfing Dunst down to the size of a miniature porcelain doll. A beautiful one, yes, but one that bears very little resemblance to anyone living or dead.
And then comes the end of the film.
WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS!
The film just stops dead at the onset of the French Revolution. My mouth dropped open as the credits came up! Just about all the major dramatic (i.e., interesting) events in Marie Antoinette's life happen AFTER the period where the film ended! I just couldn't believe it! And still don't. What in the world could Coppola been thinking? Ah, well, at least my friends and I got to see the film at half price during the matinée.