An original aesthetic - hats off to Coppola!

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2006)

If we believe the feminist viewpoint of one of Alan Bennett's characters (from The History Boys), history is the story of men's inadequate responses told from the point of view of other men. So how would a woman's woman auteur, Sofia Coppola, approach a film about one of the most vibrant and controversial of women in French history? Not in a way that is to everyone's liking, that's for sure.
Austrian Marie Antoinette was married off to Louis XVI of France, in part to ratify a treaty between the two countries. She lived with him until the Revolution did away with both of them. There is more than enough tabloid character, scandal and turning-points-in-history in her life to make a colourful epic, or sufficient salaciousness for a hearty romp; and while both of these might be stock-in-trade justifiable, the initial scenes suggest we are in for nothing of the sort.
Bright pink opening credits catapult us into 1768 Austria with an intrusive girliness reminiscent of a retro pop-video. They soon give way to nice pastels (even the horses gallop through woods in soft focus) and a feminine intellectual assertiveness that somehow says this will be no re-telling of a man's take on history. The facts, while not exactly misrepresented, are definitely going to be subordinate to the artist's vision.
For the talented Kirsten Dunst, it is the most challenging role of her career to date. As the leading actress she delivers Sofia Coppola's interiorised vision with charisma and remarkable aplomb. We see her taken into a foreign world and completely isolated (everything, her last shred of clothing and even her dog is taken from her, so that she has only that which is 'completely French'). We see her suffer the glare of publicity even around her marriage bed, and witness the guilt she feels at not becoming pregnant soon enough. We see her searching inside for something to cling to while surrounded vast opulence; and the requisite public persona can admit no unhappiness. British audiences may even see a reminder of Princess Diana, but the significant achievement is perhaps how we inevitably view the possibility of any woman-living-in-a-man's-world feeling for her condition and, through Antoinette's eyes, we also witness history enacted around her in a way almost distanced from her inner turmoil. Antoinette is envenomed at the openness with which a prostitute is allowed to flirt in court; yet at times she feels she herself is little more than a 'piece of meat' traded for politics and progeny. This queen-elect is bereft of privacy and not allowed to be herself, on top of which she doesn't even have a whore's tricks-of-the-trade to get her inexperienced man making babies inside her.
Marie Antoinette soon withdraws to the countryside, getting in touch with nature, her artistic sensibilities, and the rearing of a child. This second phase of the movie allows a warmth and simple intimacy in the human condition that was lacking at the Palace of Versailles.
Her young husband, meanwhile, continues his wargames, lending soldiers to the American Revolution even though the French peasants are starving. Through Dunst's humility before the things which her character doesn't understand, we glimpse both the true magnificence of the pre-revolution French court and the seeds of its destruction.
With unparalleled access to the Palace of Versailles, Coppola has spared little to convey an authentic artistic vision; but it is an aesthetic which owes more to Warhol than Rembrandt. Pop art is employed almost throughout; from a masked ball overlaid with Siouxie and the Banshee's 'Hong Kong Garden' ("an old custom to sell your daughter"), to posters overlaid with slogans vilifying her supposed excesses; or the swift reintroduction of paintings from which successive infants disappear to indicate early deaths. There is no attempt to disguise accents  why bother? - Coppola's point goes beyond undemanding historical verisimilitude. At one point, Antoinette's outer happiness becomes real and she sweeps the crowd along, breaking with tradition to applaud an opera. In another scene, we see her on a balcony alone, the darkness of the room at her back. The camera pans back to show the vastness of the beautiful Palace around her, empty of all other signs of life. Here, she is like a captured bird in an over-gilded cage.
No-one does rich-little-misunderstood-girl quite like Coppola . . .
Building through two first acts of eye-candy superficiality, the coda comes as a slap in the face. Gone are pop music and Mozart - say hello, stark reality. It is not too difficult to find analogies to modern top-heavy nations, whether they be Iran or the USA. How many people have to starve before the boys at the top stop playing war and self-satisfaction? Is the vision of the artist (or even of a child and its mother) really a less viable view of the world? Marie Antoinette can be seen as a cutting feminist diatribe or simply the work of a director who views the universe, the established facts from which she culls only what she deems appropriate for the opus, and even the feelings of the nation in question, as nothing more than her artist's palette. There is a similarity to De Palma's Black Dahlia that thumbs its nose at what an audience expects and simply ploughs on with the ingenious lighting and idiosyncratic revelations; but Coppola's quirky, sugary and sympathetic tone may well upset traditionalists. Some people may just find it flippant. A film that relegates the French Revolution, incarceration and guillotines in favour of subtle emotional resonances and gender imbalances will make a lot of people ask if Sofia Coppola has simply missed the plot. But for someone who pits herself against a male-orientated view of the world, she acquits herself quite admirably - and not just with girlish charm. Marie Antoinette goes beyond its individual example in French history: it is the hope of a nation, hidden in that which is most despised.