Complete waste of everybody's time

Rating: 1/10 (19 October 2006)

I'm sorry, but the impressive camera-work and fancy costumes simply don't address the near-absence of anything resembling a plot, or the paper-thin characterisation. I learned next to nothing about why Marie Antoinette is such an iconic figure, or about the French Revolution. In my view, a major flaw of the film is that there is no storyline taking place outside the Palace of Versailles, so we don't really get to find out much about why the people are rebelling, other than vague mentions about the cost of the war in America and the unpopularity of the Queen's extravagant lifestyle. The French Revolution was one of the great cataclysmic periods of world history, and a film set during that period has no excuse for being so deathly dull.