Could have been great, but...

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2006)

I've just seen Marie-Antoinette at a sneak preview in Amsterdam. I had heard and read so much about this film that my expectations were probably too high. Hence my disappointment. What a strange mixture! Kirsten Dunst is excellent, and Jason Schwartzman too (as Louis XVI), but what a pity for the rest of the crew: this mixture of accents (American, English, French, fake French...) doesn't help. Coppola tried to give a modern twist to M-A's story (with Rock'n Roll music and Dogma-style filming), but I found certain things quite... surprising, like the masked ball at the Garnier Opera, which was only built in 1874, 80 years after M-A's tragic death... But I thought: Why not? Let's be open-minded... Actually, my main problem was not with this aspect of the film, but more with the fact that it lacks rhythm, and that it's much too long (almost 2 hours!). And there are huge gaps on the historical level, which Coppola tried to fill up with paintings (like the death of one of her children, who's erased from a painting). Could have been 'funny', but alas!... it isn't. But let's stop complaining for a moment. I gave this film a 7 because I still think that some moments are of pure magic, like the part about nature, when M-A seems to find peace in her little 'farm' next to Versailles. In those moments, I had the feeling of seeing Lux Lisbon from The Virgin Suicides (also played by Kristen Dunst...) evolving in a sort of timeless parallel world. Pure beauty! In those moments, I thought: What a queen!