Excellent!

Rating: 10/10 (5 June 2006)

I am not really a Sofia Coppola fan, but I did love her work in the Virgin Suicides ( I really couldn't care less for Lost in Translation), but her Marie Antoinette is an experience anyone who loves movies should endure. While on a vacation trip to France to visit a cousin, we decided to go see the film, since it had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival just three days before I got there. My cousin had told me that while the reviews over there had been ecstatic and raves, some of the french press booed at the press screening. To be honest, from that reaction, I immediately thought the movie was going to suck, but then I remembered whatever the critics hate, I end up loving, so I gave it a shot. This movie blew me away! I of course had found out before hand that this film has nothing to do with the revolution, or the beheading of the last king and queen of France. So I went in there with knowledge that I wasn't expecting a boring period BBC dramatization of Marie Antoinette. The film is glorious to look at! The costumes are simply the the greatest costumes ever constructed. We are used to seeing 18th century costumes with wild plooms, and explosive beading and diamonds every where adorned, but these costumes were much more simpler but had a dramatic effect to the eyes ( this is so winning best costumes at next years Oscars). The actors were tremendous particularly Dunst, who whenever I would read threads about Antoinette on here would be bashed because some people said that she cant act, or she could never pull off this role. Believe me, she does (if campaigned right, she could so get an Oscar nomination for this)! She excels as the doomed Queen of France in every way imaginable! She is a frightened teenager in the beginning of the film, trying to please everyone even her overbearing mother (played by the wonderful Marianne Faithful), and you automatically identify with her. Here is a girl who has no friends, no close companions, and while she tries to please her husband, he (jason Swarchtzman, great as always) just blows her off, because he feels that he is not the kind who likes to have sex! So she grows up in the palace of Versailles's, and gets her reputation as a bit of party girl who loves parties, clothes, jewelery, company of women (who wouldn't want that if at 19 become ruler of a powerful decadent country) till finally when she has her children you see her mature and become a loving mother, and a devoted wife. Sofia has made an excellent movie. Sure the script does lack a certain depth to some characters, but remember this isn't your mother's Marie Antoinette. This a new wave Marie Antoinette, and Sofia excels in her vision! But this film isn't for everybody. If you have a problem with rock music used in a period film then you may cringe at some of the moments when the songs are used. Also if you expect to see a full blown bio of the Queen, then you are dead wrong, because this film explores how one minute Antoinette was the toast of France, to the last where she finally accepts her fate as the last and doomed Queen of France. It is a very good movie. I highly recommend it.