A Very Good, Oft-Misunderstood Act of Sympathy for Perhaps the 1st Victim of Antagonizing Celebrity Misrepresentation

Rating: 7/10 (14 September 2008)

Like Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation, this follow-up highlights the isolation of being a woman and bounded by a world that understands how to exploit you but not how to appreciate and understand you. It demonstrates Coppola once more capable of extracting interpretation from actresses who are hardly ever compelled to express it. Kristen Dunst uses an innocent passivity as the title character, as a 14-year-old Austrian princess who is basically bought and traded to the French court to connect with the naive and oblivious Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) to manufacture an heir. She has self-possession, composure and cheerfulness, and they are limited to a world that provides her no manner in which to gainfully convey them. So she clowns around and spoils herself, contained by a bubble of harsh and unyielding royalty's code of behavior. Greed and isolation can breed arrogance, ignorance and lack of empathy.
I know what many who have yet to see it probably think, and this movie is not instructive and comprehensive regarding the real government of the era. That is for the reason that we are exclusively inside Marie's world. And it is enclosed within Versailles, which excludes all peripheral certainty. It is an independent structural land mass that shuts out affairs of state, realism, destitution and the general public.
Schwartzman portrays a sexually unreceptive pout who would more willingly offer condolences than assume an operating position. Danny Huston is amusing as Marie's older brother, introduced from Austria to gently infer to young Louis one or two essential hints on the subject of a little thing called sex. Horndog Louis XV played aptly by Rip Torn in a hilarious casting choice, would without a doubt need no encouragement to have sex with anybody, as his mistress, a madame played by Asia Argento (another daughter of a famous director) instantly discerns.
Coppola does something I like very much, which is making use of setting to characterize the existence and personality of the characters. Permitted undivided admission into Versailles, she illustrates a civilization neurotically committed to the pampering of Marie Antoinette. Coppola's film has been passed judgment upon by some for her application of a modern pop top-lathering, mainly the emo pop rock soundtrack, but also inconsistent dialogue, jarring infringement of characteristics of the modern world superimposed upon 17th century France. But no one in the movie lives in 17th century France. Several people in historical movies appear in some way conscious that they are living in the times of yore. Marie gives the impression of a modern-day liberal-minded teenage girl, which sure enough she is, and the up to date pop allusions tempt the audience to share her what-the-hell attitude with ours, or should I say let-them-eat-cake. Shakespeare mixed eras, too.
All criticism I have gathered of this film's respectable enough but quickly faded reception could easily alter its breakable sparkle and relegate its dreamy and heartbreaking affection for the real Marie Antoinette to the rank of an informative depiction by misunderstanding its unconventionality. However, its falling off can be mostly attributed to the common marketing stupidity in that few theaters in fact showed the movie on the publicized release date. In the face of the fact that the trailer presented a release date that was inevitably assumed to be nationwide since it said nothing of limited release or select cities, the movie only went to big cities on its opening weekend and in select theaters at that. It abstracted almost a month for it to trickle down to the majority of local cinemas and by then too much time had gone by for an adequate turnout.
Everyone knows Marie Antoinette was guillotined and we expect her gruesome death with an unpleasant interest. Coppola skillfully circumvents a decapitation, and stays away from overstuffed riotous mob scenes by using light, sound and a balcony to manage Marie's execution as a curtain call. As she was made by the aristocracy, for all intents and purposes, to take the part of a princess, she is naively loyal to her imposed function.
It is not needed to know anything about Marie Antoinette to get pleasure from this movie. Some of what we think we know is mistaken, as she was perhaps the first victim of antagonizing celebrity misrepresentation and today's interpretation of history has a lot of its residue. As maintained by Coppola's rendering, she never said, "Let them eat cake." "I would never say that," she defends angrily. What she says is not "cake" but "custard." But, in spite of what you would think, the more you know about her, the more you might realize, as Coppola's sideways approach alters the poise away from practicality and into an undertaking of compassion for a sensitive, free-spirited person imposed upon by things and people that deserts her natural need for individual freedom outside her high-society surroundings. Prior to being a queen, prior to being a hostage to fortune, Marie was a young girl coerced from her home, stripped naked, and scrutinized like a commodity. It is beyond belief with what lack of interest or concern for her feelings the court lords and ladies exploit her for its gratification and decadence, and from our reaction to this film and the inevitable thought of her death, we then perceive with a strong sense of injustice that in exterminating her they disposed of what little guilt of which they were capable.