Let Them Watch Cake!

Rating: 4/10 (25 October 2006)

Marie Antoinette is the film equivalent of one of those expensive fashion magazines that pepper indie art galleries  packed with achingly hip aesthetics but free of meaningful content. The film traces the life of the last Queen of France from her introduction to the French court until her departure from Versailles. If you're looking for serious history though, you're better off sticking to Antonia Fraser's source novel. Wigs, footmen and finery are more often than not filmed to the strains of 80s pop and punk and a pair of Converse shoes even sneaks onto the screen (though viewers will have to be sharp-eyed to spot them). It's the 18th century, Jim, but not as we know it. Marie Antoinette the film shares the obsessions of Marie Antoinette the character  shoes, cakes, finery and having fun. It even finishes before the dark conclusion to Marie Antoinette's tale  her arrest and subsequent death by guillotine for treason. Sophia Coppola's last film, Lost in Translation, won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay but it's safe to say she won't be receiving any such plaudits for this script. There's barely any dialogue for the first twenty minutes, and most exchanges thereafter are pithy and shallow. Great actors  Rip Torn, Danny Huston, Shirley Henderson  are given nothing much more to do than push the narrative along its slow path. Dunst's role is mainly to giggle, roll her eyes, and run around in period costume. O.C. characters have more depth. Visually, however, the film is stunning. No, better than that: it's luscious. Coppola was given special dispensation to film in Versailles and all the extravagant finery of the palace's rooms unfolds across your screens. When Dunst has a shopping spree  to the anachronistic sounds of I Want Candy by Bow Bow Bow  you go with her, feasting on cream-stuffed cakes, delicately stitched shoes and beautiful, patterned fabrics. The film is an orgy of materialism, filmed with the sharp editing and honed soundtrack of a television advert. All of which makes it difficult to see what point Coppola's making. The camera's fetishises the spoils of wealth and yet we're encouraged to feel sympathy for her as the revolutionaries close in on the palace at the film's end. She wants us to think Marie Antoinette's character was misrepresented  'I never said that!' she claims of the famous 'Let them eat cake!' reports  but shows us enough debauchery to reinforce the common perception. In fact, it's difficult not to see the director herself mirrored in her central character as it was in Lost in Translation  the spoiled Hollywood royalty reaping the benefit of her connections to stuff herself (and her film) with profligate confectionery. Your enjoyment of Marie Antoinette will depend on how you go in. If you're expecting Dangerous Liaisons you'll hate it. If you think you'd enjoy an 18th century hybrid of A Knight's Tale with Clueless, kick off your Converse, stock up on fairy cakes and indulge.