Disappointing.

Rating: 3/10 (20 October 2006)

This movie was a major disappointment to me for many reasons. I have always admired Marie Antoinette's courage and the dignity she displayed until her death. As one of 16 children born to Austria's queen, Marie was sent from her family at the age of 14 to marry a shy, chubby boy of 15 named Louis. The movie leaves out how young they both were although much later in the movie it has her at her 18th birthday party and you could hear people in the audience going, no way! she's not that young! It makes them unable to empathize with her because she was not what they had thought. Louis was plagued by a condition called phimosis, which prevented him from fathering children until after he had a minor surgery 7 years later to correct it. The movie simply makes him appear uninterested in sex. However, all of France blamed Marie for the lack of an heir, although the movie downplayed how all consuming she must have found it. Although, in the beginning Marie was very extravagant and a gambler, after the birth of her children she began calming down and became a devoted wife and mother who personally supported all reforms the public demanded. The movie makes her appear extravagant until the very end, ignoring the fact that she had instituted many reforms in order to cut expenses. But the thing about the movie that bothered me the most was that it took lies that the instigators of the Revolution told, such as a supposed affair between her and Count Hans Axel Fersen, a Swedish diplomat, and portrayed it as true. The cinematography for this movie was not up to par. The focus was not perfect; there were scenes in the movie where the point of focus was on the wall, not the characters. There were many static shots. There are several times when the scene is a room, and just the room, for 5-8 seconds and then skips to a new scene altogether. The end of the movie was abrupt, leaving many in the audience going, what...is that it? You see the family leaving Versailles, then you see the mess the mob made of her bedroom (a static shot for about 10 sec) and then thats it. Nothing else. Not even text to state what had happened to the family. (Which, in case you are interested: The family was imprisoned for many years while several revolutions happened in France. After a long period of time, France and Austria went to war. The former king and queen were taken and tried for treason, found guilty, and sentenced to death. After her husband's death, she was driven through the streets in an open air cart, and taken to the guillotine. After stepping on the executioner's foot, she apologized to him. Those were her last words. Her son was imprisoned until he died of Tuberculosis. Her daughter lived, married, then died leaving no children. Marie was 37 at her death.)