Coppola's personal take on a historical figure is keen, hip, too loose and very stylish

Rating: 7/10 (24 October 2006)

Sofia Coppola challenges the idea of doing a costume/period drama with her film Marie Antointte, and it's an interesting exercise in the art of showing how empty and frivolous royalty can be. It also reminded me that, compared with this, Lost in Translation's screenplay is actually much more focused and cohesive- in the sense of the structure of nothing going on (yet things seeming to be going on all the time). It's a European style character study where the characters don't have a whole lot of depth to them, even if the first hour or so delivers on being absorbing entertainment and craftsmanship (err, Craft-woman-ship now I guess). Coppola has her heels dig very well into the history and period detail of it, but she's actually not even that interested in the politics and the main desires of the people of France and elsewhere in Europe (in fact it isn't until the last ten minutes that the audience is really aware of a mass public who hates their guts to pieces). The world of the French royalty in the late 18th century- where Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is plucked up from Austria at 14 and picked to be the breeder for Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman)- is an insulated one, and the picture really becomes about how these two young people deal with this kind of heavenly constrictive paradise.
Coppola does a lot to make the costume drama a lot more spiffy and fun than one might find in the common Ivory/Merchant film. We get 80's pop and new-wave songs on the soundtrack, many times over in the midst of some regular classical music in the halls of the Versailles. And there are many a montage devoted to shoes and pastries and cake. But through this, as mentioned above, the first hour is the most compelling and fascinating, as the first twenty minutes actually come off more or less like it could be all silent- the images totally speak for themselves, in the very restrained, always-pattered way of life that's lead for Marie and the King. It becomes apparent that Louis isn't really all that interested in her- matter of fact not really interested in anything at all, kind of incurious aside from his locks and hunting (kind of sound familiar, cough- Bush- cough). Schwartzman plays this superbly well, with a countering to what Dunst does with her main female protagonist. While Schwartzman is always reserved, a little dim, and trying to always cling to the proper ways up until the last dinner, Dunst's Marie starts off not totally sure what to make of this environment, and finds that the escapism of this world is the only way to find some kind of fulfillment, however shallow it might be.
It's in the second half, however, that Coppola's script becomes a little more than meandering. It's like as if things just seem to be happening, though not really at the same time. While there is always the obvious, welcome influence of Antonioni lurking in many scenes (Coppola admitted to him being an influence at the 04 Oscars), particularly towards the end in showing the lack of true emotive connectedness between people in the upper class, there is also a lack of cohesion to all of this that wasn't as apparent in 'Translation'. There is a good sub-plot involving Marie's tryst with an American officer, but more often than not we get scenes with her doing not much at all, wandering aimlessly, fooling around with her kids, wandering hallways, etc. Moments like these are fine over the main context of the first part, as Marie is under pressure to bear children, but after a while the thread, however loose, gets a little un-reeled. Even an interesting moment like transitioning through time via paintings becomes obvious.
In the end, I liked what I saw, and liked the intentions that Coppola had with the material, and especially the cast that she assembled (aside from the other two, Judy Davis, Asia Argento, Steve Coogan, Rip Torn, Molly Shannon and Marianne Faithful are among the many talented members of the cast), but it didn't amount to something that would mark it as a great film or even as an important one. It's a well produced, self-conscious interpretation that gives a few sparks to the notion of how material like this can be approached differently, though also longer and not as altogether as it thinks it is. I'd love to find the soundtrack though.