The audience hungers for narrative nourishment? "let them eat cake", Coppola seems to answer. By preferring montage sequences to dialogue, and using repetition to suggest the slow passing of time, the film loses dramatic intensity and sinks into a languid torpor. When history finally catches up with our oblivious queen, her naiveté is grating rather than endearing.
After The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette is the third film in a trilogy dealing with young women who are "lost in transition" between innocence and adulthood. This ennui Coppola is attempting to portray is the profound confusion of a soul which refuses to leave childhood behind, often with tragic consequences.
"Write what you know" is what young screenwriters are often taught. Perhaps Sofia Coppola knows a great deal about spending time in four-star hotels, bored, in search of a father figure with whom to connect. Perhaps she knows a great deal about being the spoilt princess who can have everything, except freedom from the burden of expectation. But existential ennui is a hard thing to film, and this third chapter stretches Coppola's one good idea very thinly indeed.
Sofia Coppola's talent is undeniable, but one can't help but hope that she will soon get over her spoilt brat syndrome and perhaps work in collaboration with screenwriters who have spent a little more time outside the gilded cage.
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Article comments
1 - Sister Ray
Why do they have to put modern stuff like pink Converses into films set in the past? To me, part of the fun of an historical film is seeing how people dressed in the past, especially glamorous queens.
2 - barf
Dude , you shouldn't be writing 'reviews' of something you've read about second hand, and something that is based on a subject that youre woefully ignorant of.
1. M-A was not the 'dauphine' [Personal attack deleted]
2. The chick that wrote the book that SC used as a basis, is not "Andrea Fraser". [Personal attack deleted]
3. Existential ennui is redundant, [Personal attack deleted]
4. M-A was 16 when she came to France. [Personal attack deleted]
[Personal attack deleted]
3 - Clarice
I wholly support Ms. Coppola's theme re: young women transitioning from adolescence to young adult hood.
I don't care if it is latently autobiographical or not.
A mere few centuries ago women were chatel, not film producers.
And coming of age has been a major theme in literature for young men.
As far as the French court, delusion, excess, disengagement and governing in isolation sealed their fate.
So possibly Coppola got it right.
4 - chinamei
I left M.A. with a head ache -- two hours of nearly pure photo essay imagery -- the level of which often resonated with the mis en scene aesthetics of sophmoric studio art.
In a word. D'accord.
5 - d dog
yea this movie is lame
6 - everyone
I want my time back. I found myself asking my wife 'what was THAT look'? 'So does she LOVE him or hate him?' or 'Why did that person do that?'.
Is this a story about sex, is this a story about food, is this a story at all?
My wife said that if not for my questions, she would have been asleep half way through.
7 - Ilona
I think that Marie Antoinette is an endlessly facinating person. I love all the stories of kings and queens of that time and see that it is not alll glitz and glamour. THe book that the film was ever so loosly based on was very good in my opinion- much better than the film so i cannot see why the writter wouild every deem that the movie was magical.
It wasnt. In my opinion it was directed by a person who knew much about beauty (the costumes were beautiful although not historically corect as they wouldn't have been wearing those shades but anyhow)and tried to be deep and meaning ful but all you came up with was a shallow hollow charater.
For one thing you had to put on the subtitles to acutully hear the words over the blaring soundtrack filled with songs that amde me cringe and i think ruined the beauty of versailles and the intricatly sewen costumes.
I really didnt like the film at all and i am only 13 and can still see though the meaninglless attemet to be arty...
8 - b0b
its a crap movie
9 - Remy Davies
It's a good movie.
10 - Marie
The Converse shoes are blue, not pink
11 - Paige~
Everyone get over it
This movie was brilliant
id like someone to point out how Sofia Coppola attempted to make this movie arty? This movie was visually stunning, an endulgence of colour, sugar, sex and new order. Whats the problem ? Im in love.
12 - Helen
Its hard to defend the actions of Marie Antoinette, a queen who lived a life of unimaginable extravagances while her people starved. I'm still not sure WHY Coppola made this film or what her point was, and I certainly felt very little compassion for this heartless, vapid queen by the end of the film. However, Coppola is nothing if not original, and her vision explored new ways of making historical drama, elements of which worked well in my opinion and some of which didn't. The film is a sensual delight, a storm of pleasures: food, colour, beauty, nature. The general absence of narrative makes the experience of watching it akin to slowly and mindlessly devouring one of those exquisite, pink macaroons. This barrage of beauty is interrupted by the modern, rock soundtrack, which seems to jar, as do the sunglasses and converse sneakers. Rather than making the Queen more accessible, the result of these modern intrusions was to shake me out of my suspended belief and force me to become aware that I was not watching the former Queen of France, but an American actor pretending whilst other Americans filmed her and tried to be witty.
13 - Mr Lover
Old Style converse hehe with a guy on a tractor :)
14 - Love Labels
Sister Ray I think the whole point of this, is to envision the mixture of modern and old, could you imagine how someone would stand out wearing converse shoes back in the olden times . . . . Amazing
15 - Jerry
Pure trash. Infantile tripe.