Marie Antoinette, 2006. Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Shirley Henderson, Molly Shannon, Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithfull, Asia Argento, Jamie Dornan, and Danny Huston.
Now showing at theaters around town.
Sofia Coppola adores couches. Couches and beds. Also, she seems to enjoy the alluring look of young women draped on the same. Coppola likes shoes and cakes and champagne, pugs and pillows and handsome young men, too. Raised in considerable splendor, by a filmmaker father who turned much of his success into a duchy of fine wines and classic cars, Coppola is about as close to royalty as you’ll find in this country (and not be associated with grim politics). And yet, the girl feels trapped. Like Marie Antoinette, perhaps Coppola senses that she’s a young woman caught in the amber of wealth, waiting for history–or the fickle tastes of Hollywood–to slice her head clean off.
There can be no doubt that Marie Antoinette continues the lonely saga of Sofia Coppola, who is gunning to become perhaps the most autobiographical filmmaker since Orson Welles ended his forty-year examination of his own destructive appetites with his death in the mid-80s. Knowing little about the real Marie Antoinette, I cannot speak to the historical accuracy of this film, except to say that I doubt there’s much interest, either by Coppola or her audience, in replicating Versailles in its exactitude. History, after all, can be a drag.
Marie Antoinette is about Sofia Coppola and young women like her (which is to say, hardly anyone in a literal sense). It is a beautiful film, well acted by some of its principals, horribly by others. Antoinette is a film that is at turns funny and insightful and shallow and tedious. Like a dessert buffet, it manages to please the eye and the palate until the garish colors and the thick frostings begin to wear on the soul, and the body craves water and bread. In the end, it left me feeling odd, confused, with a bit of a headache, and still trying to grasp its deeper meaning… if there is a deeper meaning.
Marie Antoinette is virtually without tension. In an attempt to forge an alliance betwixt Austria and France, Maria Teresa (Marianne Faithfull, doing her best Judi Dench impression), the ruling Empress of the former, weds her youngest daughter, Antonia (later to be dubbed Antoinette by the Frogs) to young Louis (Jason Schwartzmann), who would go on to become Louis XVI. In Austria, young Antoinette lives the life of simple royalty, in dark rooms with happy pugs and good friends to while away the hours. She is all of fourteen years old, and France is going to change her, big-time.
At the border between the two countries, Antoinette is met by the Comtesse de Noailles who will instruct the young girl on etiquette and all things royal (in France). She is portrayed by Judy Davis, who at one time was one of the greatest actresses, a woman of startling range who could be terrifying, hilarious, and melancholy in a few breaths. Here she is an anal-retentive bitch, and the first sign of Coppola’s inability to rein in her actors, or to direct them in any way. The Comtesse is all pinched lips and irritated snuffs blasted through flared nostrils. Soon, Antoinette will be plunged headfirst into the court at Versailles, with the Comtesse at her elbow, trying to get the young girl to eat properly, to wait patiently (and buck naked) while subordinates vie to dress her, and, eventually, to conceive an heir to the throne.
Here, then, is the tension: young Louis, for whatever reason, has no interest in making love to his young wife. How old is he? Is he too young and scared to touch this gorgeous young thing? Perhaps he’s gay. Maybe he’s got a lover on the side? Don’t know–aren’t meant to know. And Jason Schwartzmann, an astoundingly mediocre actor riding his role in Rushmore for yet another picture, plays Louis as if he were nothing more than a suburban teenager. Maybe Louis is just like all those fellows vying for Sofia’s attention as a young girl. Those wine country guys aren’t the most thrilling, I guess.
For whatever reason, Antoinette does not dislike her husband, waiting patiently while he figures out what to do with himself in their wedding bed. In the meantime she shops, goes to parties, bats her eyes at a roguish Swede, and eats piles of cake. Eventually Louis comes around, they consummate their marriage, and she has a girl, who gives our eponymous hero buckets of joy.
For the most part, Marie Antoinette is a blameless creature, a girl who tries to inject some life into the stuffed shirts and just wants to be happy. Coppola is a master at scenes of young girls pining for that elusive something, and the chores they create to fill bored afternoons. But Antoinette seems almost too close to the filmmaker’s heart, for she is sheltered in this film, never challenged, and key plot elements are dropped entirely. There’s never an argument between Louis and Antoinette; she has an affair that provokes no gossip (where up to this point a pair of shrewish aunts clicked their tongues mercilessly); Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson arrive in France, and there’s mention that they’re a crazy pair, but Antoinette never gigs with them. What a story! Instead, we get more and more parties, more and more shoes, and more and more cakes.
Finally, the mob descends on Antoinette, and we all know the story: she’ll lose her head. The final half hour is tedious, its lighthearted characters forced into somber tones delivered with all the authority of a teenager admitting guilt to a hall monitor. Antoinette becomes a dutiful wife, Louis a responsible adult, and the fun drains right out of the picture. Personally, I was desperate for a dark and dirty mob, wide-eyed and full of violence, to purge this motion picture of its silks and sauces. But it was to no avail. Instead of chaos, Antoinette is taken away in a fancy carriage, muttering to herself. The final shot is a blue room, its chandelier busted and on the floor, the bright lights having fallen to darkness.
Perhaps the mob are the critics growling at Sofia Coppola, the wrecked bedroom her own little world collapsing as adulthood (and these critics) begin to assert themselves. Marie Antoinette is close to being a great film, but it suffers for its inability to truly wonder about itself and to be totally honest. Coppola should never have even thought of tackling anything real, like the American revolution, when she’s most real being a sad young girl, surrounded by wealth. Dunst’s Antoinette is a pretty enigma, lacking self-reflection, lacking even anger and frustration, a beautiful zombie that leaves us frustrated and wondering. If she really said “Let them eat cake”, perhaps that’s because that was all that nourished that poor soul.
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