I want a tshirt that says that. I also want a tshirt that says Marie Antoinette Rocks. Because it does, literally. I attended the US premiere of the film last night at the NYFilm Festival where most of the stars and director Sofia Coppola were in attendance. One could tell because of the blinding lights from the cameras going off outside. They also sat for a Q&A where stupid people asked stupid questions. My favorite being, "Sofia, how did you film the sunrise?" The whole premiere and film festival experience was a great time and something I want to do a lot more of but it also was what people told me was a very "New Yorker moment" which having now done it, agree with. Unless you live in LA where they premiere and open Hollywood movies like King Kong, New York gets premieres of movies that win (and in the case of MarieA don't win) awards at Cannes, Sundance, and other film festivals that matter. I would much rather be here than sitting in the sun trying to wish for culture.
The film was great and not just because Coppolas last movie Lost in Translation is on my top five of all time favorite movies. The real party (and the better part) begins half way through the movie once you get used to the idea that Marie is naive and lost, but the opening sequence of pink and blacks playing off of the above photo to the song "Natural's Not In It" gives you the idea that Sofia is going to be having fun. She certainly has a serious interest in music set to unbelievably juicy scenes. Scenes that the real Versailles could only produce. The film is littered with pop rock tunes clashing with Opus's and Baroque pieces. It works beautifully well and is one of the highlights of the film. Moments like a Converse sneaker popping up in the four pairs of new shoes Marie got a week didn't work as well. FYI, Marie had run France 500,000 livre in debt within 18 months of the Kings coronation and the 500 servants who works in Versailles hardly could keep up with her extravagances.
I totally identified with Marie (minus the living in Versailles, having servants, and elegant gowns thing) but especially as she wanders around Versailles trying to live up to some ideal, trying to feel included, trying to relate, and ultimately she falls flat on most until ultimately she breaks the ieals down in some punk sorta way. It all begins with clapping at the Opera (unheard of at the time) before taking a hot Swiss lover and rolling around in the grass in her Chantilly Chateau. Throw in elaborate parties, cake, decadence, unbelievable outfits, coke, pot and well.. the party starts half way through the movie to the tune of "I Want Candy." Having to consumate and produce a dauphine with a King who was a little like a gay boy in bed with a girl was not the easiest of tasks. Her most famous line was never uttered instead Sofia chose to make Marie clueless (which was accurate) and say instead, "I would never say that," seems perfect. Honestly, this movie was at times like a gay boys dream. It is catty, bitchy, jaded, lavish, ludicrous, and downright dirty.
NYT: This Marie Antoinette is a party girl with a gay hairdresser and a shoe fetish. She drowns her sorrows in bonbons and Champagne while, beyond the castle walls, the people starve. As for her famous response when told that the masses had no bread — “Let them eat cake” — both Lady Antonia and Ms. Coppola dismiss it as gossip. (In the film, Marie Antoinette herself laughs it off.) Speculation that she had a passionate affair with the Swedish count Axel Fersen is portrayed as fact. Ms. Coppola’s film takes other liberties: she eschews the often stately colors used in portraits of the French court for pastels inspired by the famous macaroons of the Parisian pastry house Ladurée. She relied on the costume department to vet dress styles or advise on the appropriate size of a bow — but only to a point.
The movie is a total period piece and you have to walk into the film understanding that it is going to be that. It is slow moving at first but it gains momentum as Marie comes into her own, which as I have said before is about halfway through the movie. The visuals are impressive, lavish, stunning. Most of which Versailles (where they filmed most of it) is able to give off just by itself. Dunst did a great job as did Schwartzman as King Louie XVI and Versailles. lol.
VillageVoice: Coppola, who not only directed but also wrote the screenplay, has no sense of being overawed by her material. Where The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation were dreamy, Marie Antoinette is more like marvy. (The director's preferred term is "girly.") Largely shot on location at Versailles, the movie is purposefully hermetic. If it were a prison film, which in some ways it is, the title might be The Big Doll House. Marie finds herself in a hissing snake pit where the devil wears Prada and goodness knows what else. She soon gets a white-wig makeover and a closet full of satin hoopskirts, but her position is scarcely secure. Everyone in this kingdom of gossip knows that her marriage to the awkward prince (Jason Schwartzman) has yet to be consummated—let alone produce an heir.
NYT: Marie is, at first, very much an outsider, summoned from Austria as a 14-year-old to be the bride of the future Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). Crossing the border, she is stripped of her clothes and her beloved pug, Mops, and welcomed into a world of rigorously observed, often ridiculous forms. Her chaperone, the Comtesse de Noailles, is played by Judy Davis, who seems to have had extra tendons added to her neck for the role. The comtesse’s job is to instruct Marie in French protocol, and she is only one of several figures who shuffle into the princess’s line of sight every now and then to offer scolding, advice and instruction. The poor would-be king is in some ways even more lost than his bride, who has a spark of mischief and an extravagant sense of style. Louis is overshadowed by his grandfather, Louis XV (Rip Torn), a rambunctious old goat whose fleshly appetites seem not to have been passed down to his heir. Mr. Schwartzman mumbles and bumbles, looking younger and softer than he has in previous films, and quietly showing the pathos of this hapless boy’s situation. He is happiest out hunting with his pals or tinkering with locks, and he quite literally does not know what to do with the girl that fate has tossed into his bed. The royal marriage is unconsummated for seven years, and the absence of new blood in the royal line becomes grist for gossip and a potential political crisis. Molly Shannon and Shirley Henderson are two of the principal mean girls of Versailles, and their chosen scapegoat is the elder Louis’s mistress, Madame du Barry (Asia Argento), who is also Marie’s rival for influence at court. The mingling of private matters with affairs of state is a hallmark of this kind of monarchy, and in Ms. Coppola’s hands the analogies to modern celebrity culture are simultaneously clear and subtle. Marie’s life is one of obscene entitlement, but it is also heavily constrained, and the story the film tells is of her efforts to accommodate her headstrong, spirited individualism to the strictures of her role as queen.
no, at the time the currency of france was called livre. see wikipedia.
"The royals had been greeted with an outpouring of national joy and the young queen was especially adored, despite the cost of the coronation (almost 7000 livres were spent on a new crown for Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette's magnificent gown was ordered from the fashion house of Paris's most exclusive designer, Rose Bertin)."
Posted by: frank | October 14, 2006 at 09:52 PM
"...Marie had run France 500,000 livre in debt...". Don't you mean, 500,000 'francs'...lol
Posted by: bri | October 14, 2006 at 07:41 PM