Life of the idle rich is idle

Rating: 5/10 (2 November 2006)

The life of Marie Antoinette in the French court. Abandoned by her husband Marie is left to her own devices and behaves as any young rich girl her age would, she shops and gossips and tries to fill her time entertainingly.
Sure to win tons of end of year awards for its technical achievements this film is rather inert dramatically. I'm sure that there is something to the story but after the shot during the opening credits of Marie lounging on a couch while a servant serves her with a 1980's song about being young and rich playing in the background there really isn't anywhere to go. That one fleeting and stunning image says more in thirty seconds then the remaining two hours does.
Beginning with Marie being sent to France to be married off the film instantly kills twenty minutes as Marie rides in the carriage to the new country. We watch for the better part of twenty minutes as she rides, changes and meets the in-laws. We then get the wedding (beautifully shot) and the wedding night, which is a real scream. After that Marie finds herself alone and we get some rather obvious montages set to a "modern rock" score. While I can admire say a sequence like where Marie shops to Bow Wow Wow's I Want Candy, I can also be frustrated by the fact that song has been used other times in exactly the same way. This film doesn't do anything new, or rather it does but pushes them to the background. The small bits where we see life in the court, and the ridiculous nature of it (ie. the wedding night, or allowing Marie to freeze as they determine who is the right person to hand her her clothes) are more interesting than everything else. Perhaps someone will take up the challenge and construct an interesting movie about that.
As it stands now we have a beautiful movie, with occasional flashes of interesting material. Worth seeing if you're into opulent rich girl behavior, everyone else should wait for video.