Excellent except for ONE BIG MISTAKE

Rating: 8/10 (19 February 2007)

I loved most things about this film.
BUT...
In the "Making Of" short on the DVD, we here the director praising music videos by Adam Ant, because of the stylization. Throughout this film, after endless expenditures of time and effort put in to make authenticity, we are subjected to wholly anachronistic rock music.
Rock music is the music of rebellion. We love it because our parents hate it. There is nothing particularly rebellious about Marie Antoinette. Moving from the main palace into the Petit Trianon doesn't really count. She is generally dutiful and obedient, right up to her decapitation.
If there are points of contact between her and today's audience, the music does not convince, it merely disrupts.
Music videos are not an advance on feature films. They are incoherent, opportunistic fragments designed to sell CDs. Directors use them as audition pieces to move up to features. Music videos use the images of history as neat bits of art direction, nothing more. Why would this director choose to go backwards in finding her inspiration? Fortunately, the folks at American Zoetrope are prone to revisiting their films and re-editing them. Perhaps in a few years, Ms. Coppola will come back to this film and re-score it.