An amateur attempt at art

Rating: 3/10 (16 July 2010)

I suppose drawing parallels between the modern teen and the life of a pampered, young 18th century aristocrat is valid, but it was clumsily slapped together in this film.
Make no mistake, one feels the full gravity of the young queen's ennui. I was just as bored and annoyed watching the endless series of attempts to amuse herself. If that was the point, then it was achieved within 30 minutes. The rest of the film had me wanting someone to lob off Marie Antoinette's head, just so that the end credits would roll.
The choice of music was all part of the jarring effect of the film that perhaps was intended to bring home the idea that these rulers were just kids, but it was distracting. The sound quality was tinny and made the music even more alarmingly out of place. In fact the scene transitions, the story telling methods, and even the accents of the actors were so uneven that almost no part of the film seemed like it belonged together. Rather it looked and sounded like a high school audio visual class experiment. (Now we're going to show time passing through music video montages and now we're going to show time passing by changing paintings and now for something completely different.)
Even the acting was spotty. There were some brilliant flashes among the muck. Jason Schwartzman and Rip Torn were wonderfully subtle. Kirsten Dunst was surprisingly inconsistent. She is a gifted actor, but seemed to be punching her time card for some of the scenes. Many of her most important lines were delivered completely flat. When one is forsaking one's only companions and pledging to stay beside one's husband during a revolution, it is unlikely that it would be done with the same inflection and facial expression as if one were reading a prospectus aloud.
As if being as bored as the characters in this film weren't bad enough, it was sad to be so disappointed by Ms. Dunst's flat performance. I wish I had missed this one.