Those were the days in Versailles

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2007)

The kings have all departed Their servants are nowhere We burned out all their mansions In the name of Robespierre.(Al Stewart,"the palace of Versailles") But Versailles is intact today.The title is a misnomer.A right one would be "Marie-Antoinette: the Versailles years" since the screenplay stops in 1789,with "Le Retour du Boulanger,De la Boulangère Et du Petit Mitron" .
Sofia Coppola's umpteenth film about the unfortunate last real queen of France is a visual splendor.Filmed on location in the place where the events took place -anyway,it's not an innovation:Sacha Guitry had already done that fifty years ago in "Si Versailles M'Etait Conté" -,it's a dazzling work.But it's also a superficial one.Marie-Antoinette is not only that greedy woman ,stuffing herself with pastries.Oh and she almost never drank wine.
Historically ,there are good things:the script writers insist it's the war in America which was the main cause for the government's bankruptcy,not the queen's expenses;The Austrian Empress's (an unrecognizable Marianne Faithful)stranglehold on her daughter is not passed over in silence.
But,because this is a la mode,much time is given over to the sexual problems.And of course Fersen sleeps with the queen (many historians wrote that their affair remained platonic).Oddly,the affair of the necklace is not even mentioned ,perhaps because of the film starring Hilary Swank that came before.
The film about Marie-Antoinette is yet to be done.
Like this?Try these
"L'Autrichienne" Pierre Granier-Deferre ,1990: the trial
"Marie-Antoinette" Jean Delannoy 1955
"Marie-Antoinette " W.S. Van Dyke 1938 (many historical mistakes)
"La Revolution Française " 1.les Années Lumières Robert Enrico,1989 (!) 2.Les Années Terribles ,Richard Heffron,1989.
"La Nuit de Varennes" Ettore Scola 1981