total eye-candy!

Rating: 10/10 (2 December 2006)

Sofia Coppola steps over the classic borders of history movies. And what she does is fabulous. She's made it new, colorful, funny, honest and rich. Coppola approaches the movie characters from their point of view. Like all her previous movies (Lick the Star, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation) the main character(s) are in a young age. In this movie (and in history of course as well), Marie Antoinette is only 15 years old when she marries Louis XVI. And what I like that Coppola does, is that she lets her characters to do things that normal teenagers, normal 15 year old would do. They do a bit stupid things that of course would not be appropriate to royals in everyone's eyes, but Coppola makes them honest. I mean why on earth everyone thinks that real Marie Antoinette didn't do such things when she was 15 and a bit older. I like that the classic and boring way (stiff, motionless faces and ALWAYS so polite and civilized) of impersonating royals has finally broken. Coppola's movies always have really nice sceneries and sometimes camera angles as well. They are so simple, but yet so impressive. And this movie has a lot of color - beautiful costumes, colorful food, colorful people etc. Sofia Coppola's movies have excellent music choice. And so does this one. Acting is wonderful as well. Kirsten Dunst plays the role of Marie Antoinette extremely well. She's sweet, smiley and cheerful. Great actress! And Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI gives his character a mystery touch, a bit weird touch as his character suppose to be at first when we don't yet understand why his like that. Great actor as well! I can't understand why the critics slammed the movie? The only thing worth of complaining is the ending. It moves slowly, yet fast, but without any big connections between the scenes, only a blank black card. Sort of like Return of the King ending. But it's understandable as well - there were just too much material. The ending part was the part where the happy and cheerful young people's life ended, it was the part where everything went suddenly sad and they finally had to start living the life of adult royals. And after all - Sofia Coppola concentrated her movie on the young life of the royals and only gave us a sneak preview of the adults. So probably someone else some day has to make the boring and old classical story of the adulthood and ending days of Marie Antoinette! 10/10