3.6.2 Marie Antoinette

Sofia Coppola’s 2006 attempt at a historical drama about the ill-fated queen of France has moments of real poetry, punctuating long stretches of empty—if beautiful—imagery.

Director of Photography Lance Acord, whose prior credits include 1999’s Being John Malcovich and segments from numerous Björk music videos, did a fine job of bringing the frigid opulence of Versailles to the screen; Milena Canonero’s costuming work is impeccable; the sets fantastic. But at the end of the film one is left to wonder, All to what end?

As a portrait of dissolute youth, the film generally succeeds; we see Antoinette, as portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, descend from naive young Austrian aristocrat to adulterous and compulsive gambler, unaware and uninterested in the changes in the world outside the walls of her palace. Dunst’s rendition is as flat as the world on which Antoinette seems to live. But it can’t be held against the actress; all the performances are monochromatic and un-stylized—lines are delivered as though in a 1980s high school drama.

While Coppola’s unusually anachronistic choice of music (mostly of the ’80s British mope-rock mold: The Cure, Bow Wow Wow, Siouxie and the Banshees, etcetera) has been a source of controversy, the parallel between youth culture of the ’80s and that of Versailles under Louis XVI is well taken and not always without effect. Even Acord’s occasional lapses of cinematic MTV-ism with hand-held shots and trick cutting in the montage scenes come off as at least excusable, if not really likable, in the service of that writerly conceit: youth culture examining youth culture.

But there seems to be little to the story besides just that static portrait, and that single conceit. Antoinette’s frustrations in breeding an heir to the French throne form the only plot-like thread in the work, and that seemingly tacked on amidst the scenes of wit and gaiety and of endless rushing about in ballroom dresses. As a member of the same puer aeternus generation as Copolla, I can sympathize with her choices, but in the end, her vision becomes itself as vapid, as empty, as self-indulgent as is the subject that it seeks to portray.

2007.11.13