Beautifully Terrible

Rating: 3/10 (24 November 2006)

For whatever reason, I am giving in to my urge to articulate my dislike for this film. I went to watch the film holding plenty of doubts, but I tried to give it a fair chance to see what it had to say. Luckily, I saw it for free.
I will start with the things I enjoyed about this film, the most obvious is it's superficial reasons. The costume design, set design, cinematography, and editing were superb. Everything in this film is so succulent and pleasing to the eye, that I am very close to forgiving the film for it's problems. But just like a beautiful commercial trying to sell you a piece of junk, I am not easily persuaded.
My main problem with the film is it's implications, politically and philosophically.
First of all, I am bothered that this film is very clearly trying to make a large viewing audience sympathize with a selfish, materialistic, negligent person holding a lot of power. The film does this by using beautiful imagery as it's means of attack. It is an obvious contrivance, and it was just too far of a stretch for me. That is the film's biggest failure. This film may have succeeded if it went more in the direction of criticizing the character, but it glamorizes her actions and interests to imply her as a heroine. It does so not through words or story, but by making a visual connection with the character to beauty, therefore implying that she (as a person) is beautiful.
Second, I am not interested in the fact that this film implies that people have little control of their actions. The film implies that Marie has little control of her life and is being led along through the story rather than making real choices, important choices. The most important choice she seems to make in the whole film is to cheat on her husband with a war hero. This is NOT a character driven script. I can almost forgive her for her actions, because she is a teenage girl. But rather than considering her as a character with impulses to give up control, I view the script as being contrived to communicate this message.
The film seems to be propaganda for rich people. Sympathize with negligent rich people who hold a lot of power and abuse it for their own excess. Why? I because they have no control of their actions, they just do what people advise them to do. They have no accountability they are born into it. What else could they do?
I also hate that the angry mob outside her palace are not characterized at all. They might as well be the "evil" Indians in old cowboy movies. Or demons. There is no characterization of one impoverished French citizen. You can barely even make out a face in the crowd, just pitchforks, torches, and grunting chants. This is incredibly terrible, and sends a negative message to society. As if people who protest and revolt are terrifying demonic people rather than logical human beings.
I also thought the soundtrack failed. And I am a huge, HUGE fan of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Gang of Four, The Cure, New Order, etc. At best, the soundtrack was an interesting juxtaposition. Maybe because I was familiar with all those songs, I got incredibly distracted and taken out of the film every time a song came on. The songs are great by themselves, but put into this context it didn't work.
Bash me and spell check me all you want, but this is my point of view.