A Review of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette

About as beautifully poetic a film could be, Sofia Coppola's revisionist period pieceMarie Antoinette will more than likely be one of the most polarizing films of 2006. There are some viewers who will take from the film a better understanding of the humanity of the tragic queen, of Sofia Coppola's bold genius, and of the talent of Kirsten Dunst. And there are others who will find the film boring, pretentious, superficial, and a waste of time. Well, frankly, those people can eat cake, because Marie Antoinette is certainly none of those things! The film is, however, a perfectly crafted film about a young girl who just wanted to live like a rock star.

What Coppola does so wonderfully here is to take out nearly all of the politics involved in the French Revolution, and leave a simple story about Marie Antoinette, from the perspective of the French queen. The film is stunningly unlike any conventional historical period piece, with a script that is brilliantly simple and straightforward, and direction that is inventive and bold. The performances are pretty much great all around, with Dunst giving her best and most subtle performance yet. Rose Byrne is a charming delight as the Queen's good friend, the Duchesse de Polignac. Other standout performances include Judy Davis as the hilariously rigid Comtesse de Noailles, Jason Schwartzman as the sexually-awkward King Louis XIV, and Steve Coogan as the Austrian ambassador to France.

Naturally, the visuals are lush and dreamy; Versailles has never looked better on film. The soundtrack, while a bit jarring at first, later becomes perfectly normal and fitting to the film. Gang of Four, Bow Wow Wow, New Order, and The Cure eventually blend seamlessly with the bubble-like world of the French court. Major props to Coppola for such a bold auditory move! In fact, Coppola deserves mounds of credit for the guts to make such a personal, and unique historical biography.