The Guardian – Peter Bradshaw

What a curious soundtrack album this is going to make. A brisk gallop through Vivaldi's
Concerto in G, selections from Scarlatti and Rameau, together with I Want Candy by Bow Wow
Wow, Siouxsie and the Banshees' Hong Kong Garden in a new orchestral arrangement suitable
for an 18th-century Parisian masked ball, and Kings of the Wild Frontier, by Adam and the Ants,
whose groundbreaking period-costume videos from the 80s this film not displeasingly resembles.
It is in fact to this last track that Marie Antoinette, the notorious queen of France, is finally
ravished by a bold court favourite, squirming and grinning with what looks like nostalgic
approval of the director's choice of ambient music.

Sofia Coppola's presentation of Marie's life has a sisterly, unjudging intimacy, and the director
has carried off pert inventions and provocations with some style, combining dazzling visual
tableaux and formal set-pieces in strict period, with new wave chart hits from the 1970s and 80s:
these musical anachronisms lending ironic torsion to the overall effect.

Once again, she has given us a poor-little-rich-girl story. Lost in Translation was about a
beautiful, intelligent young woman, locked in an unsatisfactory marriage, who finds herself
disorientated in a foreign country. Marie Antoinette is about ... well, much the same thing.
Kirsten Dunst plays Marie, brought over from her native Austria to pre-revolutionary France to
cement a diplomatic union of these nations in her marriage to the young Dauphin Louis-Auguste,
played by Jason Schwartzman, whose face, set throughout in an expression of suppressed
drollery, is more modern than any of the guitar bands crashing away in the background.

Dunst is perhaps the only possible casting for the young heroine: an intelligent, biddable young
woman who glides through what is expected of her, irreproachably charming of dress and
manner, and for whom dissent is restricted to a quizzical half-smile and elevation of the
eyebrows. She is the new kid at Versailles High, weirded out by the local cliques and always on
the point of saying out loud: "Like, hello?" Her only friend appears to be the ageing King Louis
XV, lipsmackingly played by Rip Torn, and it seems at first as if Louis might even be Marie's
Bill Murray-style confidant. His emotions are however engaged with his mistress Mme Du
Barry, played by Asia Argento, who resents the sneers she receives from the various sycophants,
mendicants and pensioners of His Majesty's court. "Nobody treats me like a lady, here!" she
complains nasally, the way Velma in Chicago once sang: "Nobody's got no class!"

This movie is certainly very kind to the queen. It finishes, discreetly, as she is forced to leave
Versailles, long before we hear the faintest rumble of a tumbril. It is a life-story in which the
final act has been amputated, as if to remove history's gangrene. Marie is furthermore shown
eating an awful lot of cake, which is not exactly tactful, though she is shown hotly denying that
she ever told the peasantry to do likewise. When this film was premiered at the Cannes film
festival, it was booed to the very echo by the French critics, perhaps because they resented the
condescension of an American director presuming to forgive a queen upon whose mythic
perfidies the republic was partly established. Or perhaps they were annoyed by the conspicuous
absence of the French acting aristocracy from the cast. (The one French actor I spotted was the
excellent Mathieu Amalric, who had to make do with a couple of lines as a lecherous nobleman.)
It is indulgent, certainly, but there is a controlled brilliance to Coppola's opening scenes, in
which Marie is taken from her homeland, spirited in a kind of diplomatic quarantine-ritual
through a Royal tent straddling the Franco-Austrian border, and then appears at the crowded
Versailles court, as alien as an astronaut. These scenes are almost entirely wordless,
approximating Marie's isolation and bafflement. The spectacular choreography of the court, with
its mask-like faces and height-doubling wigs, are wonderfully paced and controlled. A long
stretch of time elapses before you realise that not a word of dialogue has been spoken. Coppola
makes it all look easy.

It is difficult, though, to know what to make of Marie's retreat into languor and ennui, her
melancholy at failing for many agonising years to provide an heir for France, and finally her
temporary adventure with a dashing Swedish army officer, whom she imagines in various proto-
Napoleonic poses. She never understands her political destiny, and this appears to be quite
accurate: the young queen, though far from stupid, had no feeling for politics. But there is no
obvious personal destiny for her either. How does she feel now about a husband to whom she has
been unfaithful? Or about a lover whose eventual disappearance from her life she appears hardly
to notice? Or about the court custom that winks at such adventures? How does she feel now
about France and her position, now that both are about to be destroyed? All these things seem to
register distantly with the queen, as if through a daze or glaze.

Again, this might have been exactly how it was: the queen heard about the outside world from
various bowing messengers, and news about the Bastille would have made an ironic contrast to
her little milkmaid fantasies at Le Petit Trianon, but this irony is left unemphasised by Coppola.

Yet however mannered this film is, the director carries off with some poise her decision to end
on nothing more than a note of foreboding and exile, and there is a persuasive aesthetic closure
to Marie's final carriage-ride away from her tainted Eden. "We are too young to reign!" Louis
had declaimed plaintively on the news of his father's death; Coppola's anthem for doomed youth
has its own affecting cadence.
Response (Agreeing with the Article):

Marie indulged in extravagant hair styles and fashion because she needed to escape from the
pressuring environment she was in. Everywhere she went she was constantly being reminded of
how unfit she was to be queen since she couldn’t produce an heir. Fashion was a form of escape,
where she could let loose and not be reminded of the “duties” of a queen. It is often forgotten
that Marie was 14 when she arrived in France. For a 14-year-old sex is not something that is
prioritized, but under the hounding of her mother and father-in-law she made many advances to
interest Louis. However, while this movie does sympathize with the queen it undermines the
burden she gave to the third estate. This is clearly exhibited when Louis’ generals tell him
“Taxes will be raised slightly” because they are nobility, they don’t realize how much of a strain
taxes put on assets. Part of the taxes the third estate pays were to sustain the royal lifestyle
(Marie’s lifestyle) and the movie “let’s her off” as she leaves Versailles which is why it did not
cater to French critics. It does not acknowledge her selfishness and entitlement, except in one
scene where she “allegedly” told the people of France to eat cake instead. The short affair Marie
shared with Count Axel von Fersen shows how she was still very young and tried savored every
bit of excitement in her life. While the people of France are struggling to sustain themselves, all
she did was fantasize about her affair. This proves how the movie romanticized France at the
time because it does not show the life of French citizens, whose lives were frightful.

Historical Relevance:
Certain aspects to Marie Antionette’s life were portrayed accurately by the movie for example
her lavish lifestyles, the pressurization of producing an heir and her lack of attentiveness to
political issues in her own kingdom. It can be exhibited from the kings wishes: “May you have
healthy children and produce an heir to the throne.” That the only expectations given to Marie
was that she produce an heir to the throne because Louis and her were too young to have political
power. Throughout the movie Marie is constantly being pressured by her family, the other royals
and even citizens of France that her marriage is “not on stable ground” because she has yet to
give birth. Disappointment especially drowns her when Louis’s brother’s wife gives produces an
heir before she does. When she finally produces a son for the throne, he dies due to tuberculosis
of the spine, this scene was simply brushed over by the movie by the replacement of a family
portrait. Marie paid extreme care to her children, yet this movie did not portray her sadness and
grief. The movie made Marie’s grand lifestyle very clear. When asked to listen in on the political
issues involving France, she is too busy focused on her clothing to care. This illustrates how
estranged she was from situations in her kingdom. It also justifies how nobody bothered to stand
and clap with her like they first did when watching the opera. She has lost the respect of her
people as she continues to propel France into debt, earning the title ‘Queen of debt”. Other
historical events were altered to fit the aesthetics of this movie. Historically critical events such
as the diamond necklace fraud and the affair with Count Axel von Fersen was not as impactful as
it was in real life. Marie Antoinette was also executed after being trialed, but the movie simply
ended with her leaving Versailles.
Sources:

Bradshaw, Peter. “Marie Antoinette.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Oct. 2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/oct/20/drama.romance.

“Marie Antoinette.” CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Marie Antoinette,

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09665a.htm.

“Marieantoinette.” Www.librarything.com, Your Library,

https://www.librarything.com/profile/MarieAntoinette.