"Off with their cakes! Let them eat--"

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2006)

Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" is an entertaining exercise in anachronism and incongruity. There, that's it. Maybe I should stop now.
How else to treat the subject of incongruity pertaining to a teen-age Austrian princess thrust into the French court at Versailles but to go all the way: The dialog goes from period to contemporary idioms, the music switches from Rameau to rock, the young queen and her ladies act like catty, giggly high school seniors uncomfortably costumed for a prom where they do ballroom dancing to rock music. Although the costumes and production design are sumptuously executed, you could almost expect a cellphone's ring tone to interrupt a scene at any moment. And it wouldn't be out of place either.
The intricacies and contretemps of court protocol are executed with obvious relish and self consciousness, the acting even more so. So why not show the whole enterprise as nothing more than a bunch of people playing pretend at royalty? The stylized incongruities certainly suit these cynical times. And yes, for good measure, the much-rumored Converse high tops (at least I agree that's what they look like) make their fleeting appearance among the young queen's exquisite footwear.
The movie takes on a semi-serious, idyllic turn in the scenes where the young queen indulges her fantasy of a peasant's life in the artificial village around the Petit Trianon, milking cows and gathering eggs, all soft focusy and dream like--a brief, happy period before she awakes to the realities of the impending revolution. It may only be fitting that we are spared the gruesome details following her departure from Versailles. Better to remember the grand times rather than a severed head.
And who knows, "the little Austrian" might have found this biopic amusing.