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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 1890
Released: February 13, 2007 |
| Our Price: $4.99 |
| Used Price: $3.25 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award® winner Sofia Coppola (2003 Best Writing Lost In Translation) directs an electrifying yet intimate re-telling of the turbulent life of history's favorite villainess Marie Antoinette. Kirsten Dunst portrays the ill-fated child princess who married France's young and indifferent King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). Feeling isolated in a royal court rife with scandal and intrigue Marie Antoinette defied both royalty and commoner by living like a rock star which served only to seal her fate.Features:Deleted scenes"Making-of" featuretteCribs with Louis XVI featurette - Jason Schwartzman gives viewers a tour of the Palace of VersaillesSystem Requirements:Run Time: 123 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 043396159105 Manufacturer No: 15910
Description of Marie Antoinette:
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While much was made of the fact that Marie Antoinette elicited boos at Cannes, the many favorable reviews attracted less attention. Inspired by Antonia Fraser's biography, Sofia Coppola fashions a portrait that's just as dreamy as The Virgin Suicides, her first literary adaptation, and the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation. Set to a soundtrack of post-punk (a conceit that adds more interest than resonance), the teenaged Marie (Kirsten Dunst, quite good) may be shallow, but she's rarely unsympathetic. The story begins in the late-18th century as the Austrian Archduchess agrees to marry Louis-Auguste (Jason Schwartzman). After bidding adieu to her mother, Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull), she travels to France, where King Louis XV (Rip Torn) sets the rules--and the list is endless (Judy Davis' Comtesse de Noailles is the primary enforcer). As for the Dauphin, he's just a boy, really, with more interest in his key collection than their marriage bed. Should Marie produce an heir, it might be enough to sustain her--since life is nothing but an endless shopping spree--but clouds gather on the horizon as an impoverished populace rises up against their extravagant leaders. Coppola merely suggests what happens next, although history paints a darker picture. Filmed in and around the Chateau of Versailles, Marie Antoinette is a riot of rustling gowns, sparkling jewels, and Manolo Blahnik-designed shoes. To say that style trumps substance does its maker a disservice, but the look of the thing does leave the deepest impression. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Extras from Marie Antoinette (click for larger image)
Featurette: On the filming of Marie Antoinette:
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Film Clip: "The Introduction"
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Film Clip: "The Royal Treatment"
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Stills from Marie Antoinette (click for larger image)
Beyond Marie Antoinette at Amazon.com
The Book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey |
More Period Pieces With A Twist |
The Films of Kirsten Dunst |
Marie Antoinette Reviews:
atmospheric New Wave pop video biopic (thumbs up) 
2008-10-02 - Just misunderstood? A scapegoat? A pawn in their game? A flibbertigibbet? That's the impression you get of the infamous Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette presented here. Kirsten Dunst, well cast as the queen, actually says she would never say "Let them eat cake" in this movie. There seems to me elements of truth to this but I took it all in very lightly while looking at beautiful and elaborate costumes, the Palace of Versailles, the wigs, the shoes, the food and pastries, all the while listening to that New Wave/"alternative" soundtrack. I think were exploring the personal and subjective here more than the political and historical. And were enjoying playing dress-up. I had a sense of what to expect before seeing it so I enjoyed the show. The film Coppola made wasn't one that many critics wanted and nor for that matter is it a portrayal of Marie Antoinette and the French court that I'd have been most interested in. But it is what it is and it's a good movie and the one the director wanted to make. You got to give some points for originality. Judged based on what seems to be what Sofia Coppola wanted to do here, it works.
I look forward to more from Sofia Coppola. LOST IN TRANSLATION is a favorite. Her films are so moody and atmospheric, at times dreamlike, and I that's what I like most about them.
Maybe check out "Ten things that occurred to me while watching MARIE ANTOINETTE" by Roger Ebert on his website for some nice insight and appreciation. Ebert is a great friend to the movies and I hope he's around for a long time to come. Also, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane's piece "Lost in the Revolution" is excellent. For a different reaction see "Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE: Not even cake?" by Emanuele Saccarelli on World Socialist Web Site. Lol.
An Honorable and Interesting Failure. . .
2008-09-29 - "Marie Antoinette" is utterly ravishing to look at and, at last, peculiarly touching in a way its histrionics and the director's disastrous choices should have precluded. A real woman emerges from the manifestly surreal structure of this film - but that isn't because of Coppola's use of vernacular English and modern pop music in stark contrast to the environment of 18th century Versailles - it's because of Kirsten Dunst's talents.
It is clear that, as others have pointed out, Coppola researched the living daylights out of the era. Scrupulous attention is paid to food, dress, entertainment, hairdos, etc. What that research must also have turned up, and that Coppola chose to ignore in service to her quaint vision, is that Versailles was one of the most formal places ever to exist on the planet. Even in French its denizens would not have used the vernacular to each other, let alone her friends fall all over the French Queen with a familiarity that would never have existed! Louis XVI's court was ruled by a rigid formality that would make the constraints of Victoria's reign look easy-going by comparison. Were it not for the wistful charm brought to her portrayal of Marie Antoinette by the truly gifted young Dunst, this would have been a total, rather than an honorable failure.
In omitting the crushing formality of Louis XVI's court, which served to insulate him and his wife from events taking place just beyond their vast, manicured lawns, Coppola omits a crucial element of the monarchy's downfall. It is rather like making "Nicholas and Alexandra" and leaving out the Romanov's history of absolute rule. In her distrust of her audience's ability to empathize with someone who doesn't talk like them, Coppola ends by sacrificing necessary historical context to support why Marie and Louis are on their way to their deaths in the final frames, and makes insupportable assumptions about how they related to each other and their friends. A few references to Marie's spendthrift ways just aren't enough to support the astonishing downfall of the last of the French kings. Barely any mention is made of the revolution brewing outside the gates until someone runs in with the news that the Bastille has been stormed. To fail to enlighten us about the events leading up to Marie's fate is in some sense to fail to enlighten us about the woman herself - they are inextricably intertwined.
One example of the historical disconnect is the the familiar way in which Marie and her ladies and courtiers lie around together gossiping and eating and shopping - it looks like nothing so much as an episode of "Sex and the City" in 18th century clothing. The fun Marie seems to have with these friends as she wanders through gardens, throws parties, and tries on new clothes, etc., doesn't support her passionate desire to escape to Trianon, her pastoral alternative from Versailles to a place more "natural".
The director's "time warp" gimmick only serves to draw attention to the gimmick itself, and distract from characterization and story. Anything less likely to focus the audience on Marie's amorous state of mind after she meets the handsome Swedish guardsman than a recent (and substandard, in my opinion) cover of "Fools Rush In" can scarecely be imagined - all one thinks is, "Oh, listen, it's "Fools Rush In" right in the middle of a film about Marie Antoinette in the 18th century! How cute!"
Marie's difficulties at the French court have been well recorded by history: the hostility she met there, exacerbated by her failure to bear an heir for so long, her homesickness, her initial isolation, and her young husband's difficulties in the marriage bed. The rest of the cast, especially Jason Schwartzman as the benighted Louis, do as well as they can in the jangled time warp gimmick that robs their story of one of its crucial underpinnings. But essentially they are working against their own interests.
The backdrop of modern English and pop music against 18th century Versailles is interesting for about ten minutes. One gets the point quickly and then it palls just as quickly. This film is worth seeing for Dunst's sweet performance and for the amazing physical production, but, finally, this is yet another film that substitutes gimmick for content. It is as if American filmmakers can't function intellectually on a par with history - they seem to feel compelled to reassure their audiences that this won't be too hard to understand or absorb. A pity.
Beautiful but boring 
2008-09-20 - I was expecting the rock music but there is absolutely, positively no story here. Nothing, nada, zilch.
The interiors look great, the clothes look divine, and the food looks luscious but that's all there is to this movie.
I could have enjoyed about 30 minutes of this eyecandy if they had just added the music from the time period - Mozart, Haydn go better with these visuals. The visuals were light and frothy but the soundtrack was aggressively modern, heavy and racing - too aggressive for this light fairytale painting. If you're going to put rock music in a historical drama, you need to put a story with it.
Even as an airheaded delight for the senses, it failed.
Good Movie 
2008-08-26 - I really liked this movie. I enjoy learning more about history, and I enjoyed learning more about Marie Antoinette.
"Do you like it with ruffles or without?" 
2008-08-11 - And such is the third film by Sofia Coppola in which we follow the lives of lost girls trying to find their way in the mismatched worlds they've been thrown into. In Virgin Suicides, there were the Lisbon sisters, strained by suburbia. In Lost in Translation, we had Charlotte, who'd rather karaoke-it-up with Bill Murray than listen to her husband drone about his photography shoot in neon-bright Tokyo. Now, she brings us the last Queen of France, most often linked to the classically obnoxious phrase "Let them eat cake" and the decline of the aristocracy, though here is no brighter than a dazed-out mall girl, shopping sale to sale and partying til the sun comes up.
It's undeniable that the French New Wave technique Coppola uses over and over gives you a feeling of personal vulnerability that allows you to understand how Marie Antoinette must've felt and how it must've been to live in such an ancient and opulent time. Like the alienation films of Antoinoni or the youthful romps of early Godard, you get a sense of inclusion that scratches the blankness of many Hollywood films. When Marie looks confused, you feel confused. When she cries, you can feel the pain. When she parties off to 80's New Wave and postpunk giddiness, you want to become a decadent royal and feast on pastries, downing them with Dom Perignon. This is not the kind of historical drama that you would watch in school or even see from Spielberg. This is the kinda thing that only a girl who dropped out of art school, knew the best bands, and favored mood over plot could make. This is definitely the Phil Spector of Costume Dramas; this one's for the kiddies.
Like a soul-searching rich girl on an MTV reality series, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst, living up to her teen queen movie status) bumps through Versailles with curiosity and restraint, choosing her friends with ease and learning the protocol of which the inhabitants of her new world live by. Married to the future king, the chubby and clumsy Louis XVI (adorably by Jason Schwartzmann), who doesn't seem to show much interest in what she likes or wants, Marie finds herself indulging in shopping and pastries, diamonds and play dates with the Comtesse and the Duchess, trying to rid herself from the ennui that pervades the palace walls.
It isn't until Louis's grandpa croaks and she's Queen, when she then begins to enjoy her life. Her 18th birthday rivals any of that on Super Sweet 16 and her clique is filled with the most lush and the most extravagant of them all. While the country begins to support America, Marie finally gives birth to a child (though-shock!-a GIRL), an act that gives her the keys to her own little retreat, Petit Trianon. There she reads Rousseau in milk-maid couture to her equally-chic crowd while they pick berries, longing to be apart of nature. It's the scenes in which she and her daughter are roaming the fields in misdirection that make you rethink the whole guillotine thing. Even her whole affair with that Swedish Dior model/soldier after the Revolutionary War, deserves a nudge of sympathy. I mean, have you SEEN Louis?
OK, you know the rest of the story, but Sofia conveys it with an indifference and innocence that surpasses the snooty elitists of Masterpiece Theater. Replaced paintings represent the loss of a child. A misclap at the opera forces the decline of an era. The whole time we watch this sad girl who had no idea what she was doing, we can only witness the kind of scrutiny and expectations she is to live by, that ultimately get her in the most of trouble. In this, we're reminded of the fallen paparazzi princesses who have only but inspired an entire generation of party goers. We're also, in a way, reminded of ourselves at that young adolescent age when immortality was foremost.
A lot of people gives this movie a lot of flack for its prettiness and lack of whatever but after Lost in Translation, Sofia knew she could do whatever the hell she wanted and if she wanted to make a synthesized bio-pic fit for Molly Ringwald about 18th century French royalty, then why not? I have watched this movie at least 50 times now and never get tired of a moment. I am always reminded of some memory in my high school life when I felt as she did or partied as she did or laughed with my friends as she did. This movie is the equivalent of a good mixtape with its disjointed scenes and bulbous beauty, declaring a sense of identity and never turning back. Though earlier, I stated that this one is "for the kiddies," this is not just a "girl" movie or a "teen" movie. This is actually for anyone who has ever experienced happy moments and knows what it's like to realize that it's all gone and it's never coming back. It's for anyone who has been under pressure, been confused, been alienated, and been neglected.
I have a feeling in 10 years, this will be considered a classic. All-time or cult? That's up to the rest of you.
