MARIE ANTOINETTE

by Kevin Koehler

Marie Antoinette has always gotten a bum rap. Formerly an archduchess of Austria, she was sold off to France in an arranged marriage with Louis XVI at the tender age of fourteen (Louis le Dernier was fifteen). Romance did not immediately bloom for the young couple; a cause of much royal consternation, Marie did not bare children for another seven years after their wedding. In 1774, Louis XV died of smallpox, making Marie the teenage queen of France. “Dear God, guide and protect us,” her husband is said to have spoken at his coronation. “We are too young to reign.” He was right. Louis XVI was not prepared to take the reigns during these tumultuous times and neither was Marie. Her foreign birth, profligate spending, and perceived callousness towards the working man (“Let them eat cake,” or so the story goes) made her a target both in Versailles and the Parisian ghetto. Marie was ultimately fashioned into an effigy of the crown’s fiscal mismanagement and betrayal of liberte, egalite, fraternite; she was guillotined before a cheering crowd, her severed head put on display just short of her thirty-eighth birthday.

No one ever chopped off writer/director Sofia Coppola’s head; her public execution was of the figurative kind. A member of one of Hollywood’s own royal families, Coppola was the recipient of a rather unwise bit of nepotism from her famous father – thrown into the deep with a lead role in The Godfather: Part III and asked to swim. Critics had a field day; Coppola the elder defended the casting and claimed they were “using (my) daughter to attack me.” While Godfather III was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Sofia won the Golden Raspberry for “Worst New Star.” We are too young, indeed. Sofia has since gone on to be a director of some acclaim, of course, so don’t feel too sorry for her.

For a period piece with such lavish costumes, locations, and set decoration, Coppola’s Marie Antoinette really is a small film, often infuriatingly so (but we’ll get to that). We meet the titular character (Kirsten Dunst) as she’s sold off into to the royal brand of white slavery. She’s not particularly excited about the prospect of marrying someone she doesn’t know, and understandably so. Looking at a painted picture of her future husband, Marie tries to look on the bright side: “He has kind eyes.” It is a tiny portrait, though, as the future king is portrayed by bad blind date Jason Schwartzman (Sofia’s cousin, in another ironic example of unfortunate Coppola casting nepotism). Marie’s new life is filled with pomp and ceremony, dessert for breakfast, whispers about her (and Louis’) sexual performance, and not least a general ignorance to the changing world outside the doors of Versailles, where the barbarians will soon be banging on the gilded gates.

Coppola has purposefully kept the narrative as focused as possible; this is Marie’s story and it’s an overtly insular one. She is shielded from the realities of Paris by both Louis and her court – a bread shortage has no relevance to her own life, so how can she possibly relate? Monarchs have always acted frivolous, even encouraged to, and Marie is more than happy to comply with what’s expected. Holes always need filling, particularly emotional ones; as Louis has no interest in (ahem) doing the filling, Marie packs hers with stuff – expensive shoes, cakes, champagne, and eventually, a Swedish army officer. It’s not a bad existence, like a gorged pig living in blissful ignorance until led to fateful slaughter.

She evokes our sympathy, but a little political context would have helped. Revolution ferments in Paris while we watch Marie take baths; it’s a defensible creative choice, but you still wish Coppola turned the camera around once in a while. Even monumental events like the “Affair of the Necklace,” which Antoinette was personally involved (and partially led to her downfall), doesn’t even get passing mention. The Bastille falls and we hear about it as she does: from someone else.

Much has been of the director’s music choices, largely eschewing period-appropriate symphonies and such in favor of 80s New Wave and Post-Punk. It’s not a terrible idea – the songs do carry with them a certain youthful indiscretion - but the execution often comes up short. Coppola has contracted Cameron Crowe Disease (Exhibit A: Elizabethtown, also starring Kirsten Dunst), appearing more interested in making a soundtrack than a motion picture. Songs overpower the scenes they are in; one imagines Coppola hopes the music will do the heavy lifting for her. It doesn’t, as Marie Antoinette functions less as a film than a two-hour music video for Sofia Coppola’s mix tape of favorite songs.

They are great songs, though.

Interesting footnote: The story of the teenage queen was previously brought to the big screen with 1938’s Marie Antoinette. Norma Shearer played the title character and was nominated for an Oscar; she was famously beat by Bette Davis (Jezebel). The Shearer film eventually became a favorite of Eva Peron, whose blonde locks were inspired by those of the actress.

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