Immerses you in Marie's world

Rating: 8/10 (26 December 2006)

"Marie Antoinette" takes you into two places the movies have never been before: the sumptuous halls of Versailles, and the thoughts and feelings of the notorious French queen. It treats its heroine with great sympathy, even her gambling parties and playacting at being a shepherdess. Marie's (Kirsten Dunst) shopping and trendsetting aren't sheer frivolities, but ways for her to distract herself from the strictures of court life and her despair that her husband, the none-too-majestic Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) shows no interest in her. The movie's centerpiece pastel-shoes-and-pastries montage, set to the song "I Want Candy," comes right after she reaches her lowest depth of misery that other court ladies are having babies while she remains a virgin.
There's a lot of talk about how Marie must produce children to cement a political alliance between France and Austria; other than that, the movie is quite apolitical. It doesn't concern itself with the causes of the French Revolution, and a few scenes of Louis debating whether to aid the American Revolution feel tacked-on. But interestingly, this apolitical quality makes the climactic scene of an angry peasant mob storming Versailles very effective. The shock you feel at seeing the mob is the same as Marie's shock, because the whole movie has been limited to Marie's perspective, the hermetically sealed world of the court.
Some have criticized the against-type casting (e.g. Schwartzman, Rip Torn, and Molly Shannon as French royalty), but it points out the human side of these aristocratic figures, making them feel more contemporary and individualized. Every actor uses his or her natural accent, be it British, American, or French, which adds to the unpretentious feeling. Besides, the emphasis here is not on speech, but on mood and image. What little dialogue there is mostly consists of gossipy whispers, lectures to Marie about her royal duties, or casual, seemingly improvised conversations.
Dunst is especially good in the early scenes, successfully playing a character much younger than her actual age. She really seems like a spontaneous, uncomplicated 15-year-old girl, which is important for the movie to be effective. This "Marie Antoinette" wants you to think about the natural versus the artificial: how the rigid Versailles etiquette stifles Marie's and Louis' natural instincts, how Marie's desire to immerse herself in artifice (shoes, clothes) is actually natural or understandable, why she is happiest on her faux farm, etc. Dunst's performance, which goes from sweet naiveté to stubborn frivolity to a growing maturity, matches the movie's rhythms.
With its dainty pastel color scheme, rock soundtrack, female protagonist who seems like an ordinary young girl instead of a remote aristocrat, and focus on visuals and emotion rather than plot and dialogue, "Marie Antoinette" is not a typical historical bio-drama. Though not as affecting as the intimate "Lost in Translation," it does cause you to sympathize with the young queen. Aesthetically pleasing and apolitical, it's the sort of movie that Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitist, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, would have made if she were a filmmaker instead of a painter.