RICH with colour and emotion...

Rating: 9/10 (5 November 2008)

When I originally heard that Sophia Coppola was creating a film about Marie Antoinette using undisguised American accents to a background of 80s pop, I was appalled. But after vowing I'd never sully my eyes with it, as things often happen... I now own two copies of the movie on DVD and consider it among my selective favourite films.
I think a film like this could be very much underestimated because of the youth and vitality in it, which might lead people to assume that it will provide a very basic and immature view on Marie Antoinette and her life. However, this movie has succeeded in not only creating a whole new view on the vilified Austrian turned French Queen but has humanised her for my generation. She is no longer a cruel, middle-aged tyrant who terrorized the French people and cared only for herself but an actual human being. A lonely and lost woman who was taken advantage of and forced into a situation completely beyond her experience or ability at the tender age of fourteen.
The movie itself is delicious to look at. The costumes, the music and the sets are almost edible, they are so lustre and rich. The costumes - oh my! They were stunning and Dunst looked glorious - I thought- as the young French queen. Convincing but effortlessly natural.
And the emotion was there. The pain, desperation, vulnerability, naivety and loneliness of Antoinette was so colourfully expressed through Dunst's very fresh and natural performance.
It is also pleasingly historically accurate. All the little details are there from Antoinette's sore relations with Madame Du Barry to the death of her daughter Sophie and the removal of her from the portrait. I think a sufficient understanding of Marie Antoinette's life is helpful because while I adored the movie and understood every detail, every gesture, every moment, a friend of mine claimed that she 'didn't understand parts of it' which originally caused me to despair at her ignorance but to later realise that if a person DIDN'T have a basic knowledge of Antoinette and the French Revolution some of the details would throw them. But this is one of very few flaws for me. I enjoyed it thoroughly and thought Dunst was at her best as the troubled Queen Marie Antoinette and Coppola did a fine job of naturalising the young Queen and making her flesh and blood.