dull dull dull dull dull dull

Rating: 1/10 (4 November 2007)

Apart from the lovely costumes and settings, there is very little to recommend this film. I think Sofia Coppola must be a closet fashion designer or interior decorator - one thing for sure - she can't tell a story with moving pictures and has no depth of understanding to communicate.
We must live in a sad culture if this sort of thing passes for good movie-making: jumping from one mind-numbingly boring scene to another with no sense of continuity, no exploration of character, no attempt to build a cohesive whole.
Kirsten Dunst looks lovely throughout the movie, but fits in to the background of late 18th century Versailles about as much as a Valley girl at Buckingham Palace.
Clothes, shoes and dressing up seem to occupy most of the first half of the movie - and the second half plods boringly along to the inevitable end - although the story reins up before the Royal family actually visits Madame La Guillotine. No insight into the power struggles of Europe, Royal life, Marie Antoinette's character, the French people or the French revolution.
Just in case anyone might criticise the movie for being vacuous - why not throw in some Rousseau? Bucolic scenes of Spiderman's girl - I mean Marie Antoinette - reading Rousseau and getting close to nature. So deep, man, I was blown away.
Louis XVI is played by Jason Schwartzman. Well! Was he badly-cast or badly-directed - or was he given absolutely nothing (i.e. from the script) to work with? At any rate, here was a man who ruled France, went to the aid of the American revolution, and became Louis le Dernier (Louis the Last)... surely not such a boob as portrayed in this movie. Through Louis, absolute monarchy came head to head with popular democracy - and the man had a chance during the Revolutionary constitutional reign, (17891792) to come to some form of compromise. He sank into depression, left many decisions to Marie Antoinette and ultimately failed. He was abandoned by almost all of the reigning monarchs of Europe, and was left to his fate at the hands of the Revolutionary council. There, maybe, is some meat for a film... but not in this version... Dresses and shoes and food delights...
To add insult to injury, along with her choppy, non-sequential presentation (I can't call it story-telling), Sofia Coppola has to show us just how "edgy" she is - and backs up some truly aesthetic cinematography with "hip" music tracks. How jarring! Not cool. Okay, so endless Mozart might have been predictable - but it would have been beautiful - and even then, there are other composers besides Mozart.
The S.Coppola formula: get Daddy's help, round up all your friends, go have a big party at Versailles, play dressing up, shoot some cool static scenes in costume, then go home. Afterwards - see if you can cobble together the "cool" scenes to make some sort of movie - add some "edgy" music - et voilà!
It's quite clear you don't need any talent to make it in Hollywood - just be an uber-cool Hollywood princess and indulge your fantasies about an Austrian princess. Oh, and having Frank for your pop can't hurt either. Did she even read Antonia Fraser's book?
So that was 123 minutes of precious life mostly wasted. I would like to get the time back. I liked the costumes, the shoes, the shots of Versailles but that in no way compensates for the tedium of the movie, and my annoyance that someone as evidently untalented as S. Coppola gets more than a dime to make a movie - something she really is not competent to do.