so many shoes!...but considerably less story

Rating: 5/10 (18 February 2007)

Director Sofia Coppola certainly didn't scrimp on the visuals in this movie. The costumes and the settings are sumptuous, and, being secretly a girl who loves fancy fluffy dresses and dainty shoes and all that crap, I was definitely taken with the decadence of this film. It's a great movie for getting tipsy and eating cake with the girlfriends, but I'm afraid as far as the actual story goes, there is something lacking.
While careful attention was indeed applied to the visual aspect of the film, most notably in a "fantasy" scene, where Marie Antoinette, in the black lipstick of an evil queen, utters the notorious "Let them eat cake" line, and in some of the scenery at her country home, not as much attention was paid to the structure of the story. The movie centers on Marie's adjustment to her new home in a foreign country, and her naivety, the latter causing her to spend lavishly while her new subjects starve. The main problem, however, is that Coppola assumes you already know the story of the French Revolution and the final fates of the royal family--none of which is shown in the film. The angry mob that confronts the royal family at Versailles comes seemingly out of nowhere. More attention to the country's affairs would have helped the plot seem more complete.
Marie's innocence to the poverty and civil unrest is also somewhat dubious. You'd think she'd have SOME idea of what was going on around her, even if she maybe wasn't completely on top of things. It's ultimately a movie about a girl who just wanted to have fun, a feature-length excuse for indulgence, and Marie is shown as the epitome of the poor little rich girl.