Dir. Sofia Coppola US , 2006, 123 mins
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn
Review by Carol Allen Based on Antonia Fraser's biography, Coppola's film is visually a delightful, fluffy confection with gorgeous costumes, settings and props, which looks a bit like a very expensive production of “Cinderella”. Though Marie (Dunst) never actually says that "let them eat cake" line (which apparently she never said anyway) the whole movie is awash with cake and champagne to the extent that you wonder how Marie and her female courtiers managed to keep their slim figures, while stuffing their faces like that! At one point someone even describes Marie as looking like "a little piece of cake”.
Coppola's attempts to draw analogies between the court of young Louis XVI (Schwarzman) and today's celebrity culture meet with limited success. Certainly the spotlight of courtly attention and restricting ritual under which the royal couple live their lives bears comparison with today's media frenzy. I have no objection to her use of contemporary rock music, but it is inconsistent and doesn't start happening until halfway through, before which the music has been more in the eighteenth century mock Mozart mode. Maybe however it is to emphasise the point in the story where Marie attempts to create a bit of freedom for herself. Marie's girlfriends have a distinct touch of the Sloane Rangers and there are times, when young Louis and his wife are parading round the fawning court, when I was reminded of the Charles and Di romantic fantasy, though with a more limited fan base. The mixture of American and English actors and accents is a little fazing, particularly Madame Du Barry (Asia Argento), mistress to young Louis's grandfather Louis XV(Torn), who sounds like she comes from the Bronx , but to be fair, they would all be speaking French in various accents in real life anyway.
Kirsten Dunst wins my sympathy from the word go, married off when not much more than a little girl, being stripped of all her possessions, her clothes, even her pet dog as she crosses the border from Austria into France, and subject to all that courtly palaver and initially a sexless marriage - - her young husband suffers from an extreme case of first night nerves, which goes on for years, preferring to play with his collection of antique locks rather than his young wife. It is not surprising she turns to shopping with a collection of shoes to rival that of the infamous Imelda Marcos and at on point an eccentric hairdo which resembles a wedding cake. She is immensely silly but also endearing. Schwartzmann as Louis is a bit of an enigma - we never really get to know what makes him tick - but there are some superbly entertaining supporting performances, particularly from Torn as the lecherous older Louis, a restrained Steve Coogan as Marie's chief advisor, Judy Davis, frozen in courtly aspic as Countess in charge of protocol and Marianne Faithful in a cameo performance as Marie's mother. There is also an intriguing contribution from Danny Huston as her brother, despatched from Austria to find out why there is no sign of that all important, treaty consolidating baby heir. I would love to know what are the magic words he whispers into Louis's ear, which miraculously solves his little sexual problem
The inevitably dark ending with the arrival of the revolution doesn't quite work in terms of switch of mood after all the preceding froth. We don't see enough of the proletariat to make the point and the carting off of the royal family to what we know is going to be their fate comes somewhat abruptly. The film is of course about a closed and unrealistic life style, not the effect that lifestyle has on its society, but even so Coppola needed to find a more integrated way of ending her tale. Overall though, while it doesn't dig very deep, the film is an extremely entertaining and decorative piece of illustrated history.
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