This years love it or hate it film

Rating: 9/10 (2 December 2006)

There will probably be no other film this year that will divide its viewers more than Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Coppola has made this years love it or hate it film. This film divided the critics at the Cannes Film Festival and few people even booed it during the screening. Some may find this film to be overly trite but in my opinion Coppola has made a wonderful film. She has captured her historical muse with artistic style and has made a provocative film about being blinded by superficiality. Everyone who has stayed awake in world history class knows about Marie Antoinette, who has gotten the rap as one of histories biggest ditz. She was known to have said, "Let them eat cake," when asked how to solve France's famine. Antoinette probably really never said it but the line has made her so iconic. Coppola's film looks at the world though the eyes of this girl and concentrates on her life from when she arrives to Versailles from Austria as a girl of 15. She is greeted at France to a very snooty welcome and goes to become queen of France. In her title of power turns to everything her heart desired. Such as fancy shoes, ridiculous wigs, elaborate gowns and partying till the sun comes up. The script was loosely adapted from an acclaimed biography of Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. Sofia Coppola truly knows how to capture youth, particularly girlhood. She has masterly captured the dreamy side of teenage girls in The Virgin Suicides. Lost in Translation captured youthful loneliness and resulted in a spiritually moving film. Marie Antoinette feels like Coppola combined her themes of Suicides and Translation and portrays them through Antoinette. She goes for more of a simpatico approach and gives some insight of what kind of woman she was. Ultimately Coppola's general thesis of the character of Marie Antoinette is that she was misunderstood and above all just a girl who wanted to have a little fun. Kirsten Dunst stars as the title role. I personally have always found this actress to be very charming and she brings just that to the role of the pampered queen. Dunst brings warmth to Antoinette and you are able to find empathy with her. The supporting cast includes Jason Swartzman as Louis XVI. He comically underplays Louis as being a young man way over his head. Two of the films sauciest performances come from actresses Asia Argento as Madame DuBarry and Rose Bryne as Duchesse de Polignac. These two actresses fit their roles perfectly and are a hoot to watch tear up the place.
Coppola beautifully captures the theme of superficiality by using the main center piece of the film to her advantage, which is Versailles. The actual palace of Versailles was used in the film and it's superbly captured. There are extravagant shots of the garden fountains and one particular scene in the Hall of Mirrors, which was opened exclusively for the film. Versailles is used by Coppola to be a fortress protecting its inhabitants from the outside world. Coppola films her actors in Versailles as if they were a box of candies. Everything feels somewhat sweet and stylized. Antoinette and her pose of duchesses are dressed in their finest and parade around the palace like the 18th century pop stars that they were. Coppola also does something very interesting in editing the film. She edits many sequences scored with contemporary rock music. During Antoinette's birthday party New Order's Ceremony scores the scene and the result is breathtaking from a cultural perspective by adding a little of the new to the old. The film opens with Gang of Four's song Natural's Not in It. It's in this scene introduced by the new wave rock song when the viewer gets a reminder that this isn't the average period piece. The films greatest strength is that it captures ignorance beautifully. Marie was blinded by her own silly life that she had no clue what was going on in the world around her and resulted with her literally getting her head handed to her. Coppola takes the approach to skip over the French Revolution and chooses to show the world through the ignorance of Antoinette. What resulted when I was watching the film was that I as well was seduced by its glamour as well. The outside world didn't exist to its characters and I could see how you could easy get raped up in it. The film ends at the beginning of the climax, when Antoinette's bubble protecting her is burst by an angry mob who has stormed Versailles. Coppola chooses not to show her execution and there is really no need to see it. The climax returns to a much needed reality to the film and leaves the viewer in the same bewilderment as its main characters.