Marie Antoinette (2006, Japan/France/USA)

A friend called when I was about a half hour into Marie Antoinette – she asked what I thought, and I replied, “I think I kind of like it.” About an hour later, I wasn’t so sure – the film has its charms, but they stretch thin before long. After a while, the conceit of a contemporized costume drama – the music and modern speech both work well – gets a bit old without anything underneath to prop it up.

Sofia Coppola is obviously obsessed with idle girls, and while she may have found her perfect subject in Marie Antoinette, the story doesn’t provide the drama to sustain a full feature, and the character of the queen is impervious to deep investigation. This Marie is almost all surface, and while Kirsten Dunst does a good job with what she’s given, there’s little desire here to probe into the psychology of the queen. We see her reactions to things more than anything else – loneliness and alienation upon arriving at Versailles, distress over the state of her unconsummated marriage, excitement and silliness with the development of her party girl lifestyle – but for what? Is Marie really no deeper than what we see before us, as she’s led from afar by her Austrian family and up close by the desires of the French court? If so, what exactly is the point of the film, other than to paint a pretty picture and to ask us to sympathize with a character that has been so often reviled in history? If that was truly Coppola’s aim, it seems a trifling matter, given the lavish time and energy spent on Marie Antoinette. But as the film is little more than a series of trifling matters (except for that whole revolution thing near the end), perhaps this is actually quite appropriate.