KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: 3/5
Based on the book by Antonia Fraser, and written and directed by Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola, Marie Antoinette is a modern look at the life of the extravagant and misunderstood 18th-century French Queen, Marie Antoinette.
She was the royal known by most for suggesting her poverty-ridden subjects "eat cake" to get around a food shortage.
It's an intimate portrait of a teenage monarch, rather than an historical epic. Marie Antoinette is a whimsical, dreamy film set in the opulence of the Palace of Versailles and filled with hip young Hollywood actors and modern music. It's a film that distracts you from its lack of historical drama with scrumptious costumes, stunning set design, and piles of extraordinary looking food.
Coppola is the queen of understated cool, and the film is steeped in her signature style. There is minimal dialogue. Beautifully framed, floaty, feminine images come together almost as if this was how Coppola dreamed Marie Antoinette's life to be: a luxurious and self-indulgent escape from a treacherous and confining world.
Austrian by birth, Marie Antoinette (Dunst) was sent to France at age 14 to marry the Dauphin Louis XVI (Schwartzman) and became a teenage Queen. Criticised for not consummating her marriage (it took Louis seven years to get around to it), pressured to produce an heir, and vilified for her extravagant lifestyle, Marie Antoinette never fitted into the conspiring French court.
Coppola sympathises with Marie Antoinette's youthful desire to make the most of the hand that life has dealt her. Sheltered within her privileged world and protected from reality (of which Coppola shows us nothing in order to make her point), Marie Antoinette is portrayed as a lonely, unguided figure who knows no better than to entertain herself with gambling, a country retreat, starring in her own theatre productions and finding passion in the arms of a Swedish count.
You wonder whether Coppola used Hollywood's rich and bored teenagers as inspiration for this film. The dialogue is contemporary, and the cast use their natural accents, so Marie Antoinette is accessible to a younger audience.
The use of music from artists such as Bow Wow Wow, The Cure and The Strokes at times comes across as inspired, and at other times as jarring and out of place. This pretty much sums up the film. At times it works, at times it doesn't.
Marie Antoinette is not driven by story; there are periods where nothing happens. Instead, Coppola has presented a visual feast for those who are happy to look dreamily at clothes, shoes and decors for a couple of hours.
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Steve Coogan, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Sofia Coppola
Running Time: 123 mins
Rating: PG (sexual references)
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts and Berkeley cinemas
Verdict: Visually stunning but lacking in soul
