A bore.

Rating: 3/10 (23 October 2006)

I think this film completely misfired. An interesting film could have been made with Marie-Anotinette & the decadence of the French monarchy as subject matter, but instead you are subjected to a couple of hours of mindless vogue-stylishness that looks more like an extended perfume ad than the feature film it occasionally tries to be. Kirsten Dunst looks amazing every time she is on screen, but because of a sparse script, the character of Marie- Antoinette is never one we can grow to care about enough. The soundtrack is ambitious but at times is very lazy in it's execution. The most obvious example of this was with the burst of The Strokes "Whatever Happened?". The song was too familiar, and too strong for the scene it was placed in and was ultimately more powerful than any of the scenes that preceded or followed it. I'm not even a fan of The Strokes, but the fact that this 30-second sound-clip was so memorable says something about where this principles film's lay. Style over substance.