What the hell was she thinking?

Rating: 3/10 (3 October 2006)

Being a complete fan of Sofia Coppola's, it pains me to say this, but I found this movie to be deplorable. I don't care whether she was as sexually emancipated as this version of her life story would make her out to be or whether she was as prim and proper as a Victorian spinster. It's the entire film that doesn't gel for me. I've seen other people rag on The Virgin Suicides or on Lost in Translation, but both of them so far exceed Marie Antoinette that it is hard for me to even type their titles in the same sentence. From the music choices to some of the costume to quite a bit of the casting and to the lack of character development, the whole thing just really does not work.
As was mentioned by at least one other user, Sofia does have a tendency to let silence and a certain type of vagary work in her favor in relaying the story she's telling. Obviously, this worked beautifully in Lost In Translation, but she also had Bill Murray there (who is a master of mere facial expression) and the sheer madness and foreignness of Tokyo to boost her style of storytelling while also making it seem subtle yet defined. In The Virgin Suicides, this once again worked in her favor because the story relies on the mystery of these sisters and an enigmatic and ethereal quality through which the boys witnessing and relaying the story to us have toward these girls. To know the precise hows and whys of their lives and demise would be to tell a completely story than the one that is the Virgin Suicides.
All that being said, when you get into historical figures, you just cannot wander into esoteric land and expect it to carry a film through. I, personally, want the meat and bones of the person even though I'm clued in enough to realize that after awhile every historical figure gets skewed one way or another. I do not believe that this movie can be defended on the grounds of poetic license. If you want to see poetic license work in a film, I would much more recommend Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes. The director made bold choices, made it clear to the audience that he was reinterpreting a very famous work. Granted, the characters are fictitious, but given that Shakespeare wrote them and they've been reenacted for 500 years, they're as close as you can get to historical without having been living breathing human beings.
All in all, really a flop in my opinion. And this from a Sofia Coppola fan.