Review of ‘Marie Antoinette’

In 1938, Jean Renoir shot ‘La Marseillaise’, a film in which the revolutionary people who in 1789 changed the course of French history are the main protagonist. Since then, the cinema has portrayed the kings and aristocrats guillotined at that time in a practically unequivocal way: they were the bad guys in a role that denied them the right to any defense. This began to change in the cinema when Éric Rohmer, not at all suspicious of conservatism, decided to offer a different point of view of the French Revolution in ‘The Englishwoman and the Duke’. His audacity in insinuating that that revolution ended a world of culture and knowledge, of subtlety and intelligence earned him numerous criticisms. But he opened a door. A door that Sofia Coppola has decided to cross by going even further.

Using the biography of Marie Antoinette written by Stefan Zweig and the essay on the queen written by Antonia Fraser as a historical base, Sofia Coppola has constructed a contemporary and daring film in which she dares to delve into such a complex character from within, leaving outside the gardens of Versailles everything that happens on the other side. In this way, Coppola’s Marie Antoinette stands as the perfect counter-shot to Renoir’s ‘La Marseillaise’, and the almost 70 years that have elapsed between one and the other show the changes not only in the reading of History, but also in history itself. history as a reflection of the time in which each film is made.

Chocolates, flowers and pink lace

Once the decision has been made to talk about the queen as an adolescent lost in a world she does not understand and which she must learn to dominate, the next step is how to tell that life. And there, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola demonstrates her enormous capacity to innovate through staging. If Rohmer chose digital technology to reproduce a disappeared world that can only be revealed through painting, Sofia, on the other hand, has preferred the tangibility of things: shooting in the Palace of Versailles itself, with its halls and gardens, it is an added luxury. But to be able to fill these halls with the sweets and cakes that delighted the queen; dress her with the light fabrics that she imposed in court fashion; make her dance to neo-romantic music from the end of the 20th century; let her inhale the aroma of the thousands of flowers that fill the stages… All this contributes to creating an atmosphere of pleasure and sleep that explains much better than many theories the isolation in which this adolescent queen lived.

Sofia Coppola has been accused of showing a France in which the people do not exist. It isn’t true. The town does not exist in the context of the queen and her world, but it does exist in the film. It exists in what is probably the most risky shot of the film: the queen’s greeting from the palace balcony when she bows before the people assuming her defeat.

For unprejudiced viewers

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DATA SHEET

Address: sophia coppola Distribution: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Asia Argento, Marianne Faithfull, Danny Huston, Molly Shannon, Steve Coogan, Rose Byrne Original title: Marie Antoinette Country: USA, France Year: 2006 Release date: 01-01-2007 Gender: Biopic Screenplay: sophia coppola Duration: 123min

Synopsis: At just 14 years old, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) becomes queen of France, and is forced to marry Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), with whom it takes seven years to consummate the marriage. The young queen takes refuge in her decadent court…until the French Revolution overthrows her and her husband and sentences them to death by guillotine.