The Girl Next Door as Queen

Rating: 5/10 (26 October 2006)

A word which has been much used, at least in the British press, to describe this film, is "revisionist", but that seems inappropriate. A revisionist version of history is one which seeks to challenge or overturn accepted viewpoints, but today the general view among historians is that Louis XVI was conscientious and well-meaning, although shy and awkward and not endowed with any great force of intellect or personality, and that Marie Antoinette, although frivolous and extravagant, was far from being the monster of popular legend. Indeed, it is generally agreed that she had some positive qualities- she was, for example, a loyal friend and a devoted mother to her children. That is precisely the picture of the Royal couple which the film portrays. Today, a truly "revisionist" film would be one which attempted to restore the old propagandist picture of Louis as a bloodthirsty tyrant and of Antoinette as a debauched bisexual nymphomaniac who heartlessly advised her starving subjects to eat cake.
The film starts with the marriage of the fourteen year old princess to the French Dauphin as part of a diplomatic initiative to cement the alliance between France and her native Austria. It then follows her life at Versailles- her frustration with Court protocol, her quarrels with Louis XV's mistress Madame du Barry, the accession of her husband as King upon the death of his grandfather, her struggle to produce an heir and the eventual birth of her children. The film ends with the outbreak of the French Revolution, but does not depict the events leading up to Antoinette's death on the guillotine. (When the Royal couple drive off in a coach at the end of the film they are not, as some reviewers have assumed, going to their deaths- they are being taken to Paris where it is hoped they will reign as constitutional monarchs). The one controversial element is the assertion- not supported by all historians- that she had an adulterous affair with the Swedish Count Fersen.
It seemed to me that the film missed a great opportunity. Had the Revolution never happened, the French would today doubtless regard Marie Antoinette in much the same way as the British regard her contemporary Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz - that is to say for most of the time they would not think of her at all, and when they did it would be as a name from a half-remembered history lesson, the consort of one of their country's duller kings. The only interest of Marie Antoinette for a modern audience is as the Queen who lost her life at the hands of the revolutionaries, and any biography of her, filmed or otherwise, is incomplete if it does not attempt to analyse why the Revolution broke out or why a section of the French population had come to detest their Royal family to such an extent that they were prepared to acquiesce in their execution. There are occasional references to food shortages, or to people's discontent at Royal extravagance and at involvement in the War of American Independence (highly unpopular in France), but these are never fully integrated into the story. The only time we see the ordinary people it is as an angry mob outside the gates of Versailles.
Indeed, it sometimes seems as though Sofia Coppola pays lip-service to the Revolution in the interests of strict historical accuracy but otherwise treats it as an unwelcome interruption to the story she really wants to tell, which is the story of Marie Antoinette as the Princess Diana of the eighteenth century. Like Diana, Coppola's Antoinette is a young girl trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who cares more for his private interests- hunting and making locks- than for her. Like Diana, she is bored and frustrated by the routine and rigidity of life at Court. (The Bourbons seem to have been particularly stuffy even by the standards of eighteenth-century royalty). Like Diana, she is more spontaneous and outgoing than her emotionally reserved husband and the courtiers surrounding him. (She bursts into applause, something normally forbidden by protocol, at the opera). And, like Diana, she finds consolation in an affair with a handsome soldier, Fersen standing in for James Hewitt. The one thing lacking is a Camilla-figure, but Louis XVI was so notoriously sexless (it took him several years to consummate his marriage) that a royal mistress would not have rung true. Kirsten Dunst does not seem particularly regal, but that does not really matter as her cute charm fits in perfectly with Coppola's vision of the Queen of France as girl-next-door. (Diana, although an aristocrat by birth, was seen as the People's Princess, the girl-next-door as future Queen of Britain). Dunst's slimline figure also seems wrong for the famously voluptuous Antoinette, who was more Diana Dors than Diana Spencer.
The best thing about the film was its visual recreation, in the best "heritage cinema" style, of the period; much was actually shot on location at Versailles. (The use of modern pop music on the soundtrack, however, was jarring).The 1760s and 1770s were a period of such riotous extravagance in interior decoration, in clothing and even in hair styles that any film set among the fashionable classes of this period cannot help but be visually sumptuous. (By the 1780s fashions had calmed down somewhat- the dresses Antoinette wears in the latter part of the film are considerably simpler and more elegant than those seen earlier). Good looks, however, are not enough to make a good film. "Marie Antoinette" is somewhat better than Sofia Coppola's previous effort, the overrated "Lost in Translation, but it is a dull, slow-moving film, lacking either dramatic tension or insight into this of this period of French history. 5/10