| Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 20, 2006 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
22
Mixed:
10
Negative:
5
|
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Critic Reviews
Coppola captures the luxe insularity of Marie Antoinette's world in a way that leaves no doubt why the revolution had to happen. The picture's final image is a moment of devastating stillness that wouldn't be out of place in Luchino Visconti's end-of-an-era masterpiece "The Leopard."
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Marie Antoinette gives a wide berth to the conventions of period dramas, especially their time-capsule remove, and instead tries to mainline the singular personal experience of the arch-villainess of French history (and freedom history, for that matter). The result is a startlingly original and beautiful pop reverie that comes very close to being transcendent.
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In the revisionist Marie Antoinette, writer-director Sofia Coppola and actress Kirsten Dunst take a remote and no doubt misunderstood historical figure, the controversial and often despised Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution, and brings her into sharp focus as a living, breathing human being with flaws, foibles, passions, intelligence and warm affections.
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In casting an all-American Jersey girl and surrounding her with Manolo Blahniks and the Strokes, Coppola draws a connection between her audience (domestically, at least) and the doomed dauphine, who is likewise insulated and distracted from her country's pointless involvement in a disastrous foreign war that is bankrupting its government and starving its people – and all the while she spends, spends, spends.
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It is far from unpleasant to watch an attractive cast led by Kirsten Dunst parading around Versailles accoutered in Milena Canonero's luxuriant costumes to the accompaniment of catchy pop tunes. But the writer-director's follow-up to her breakthrough second feature, "Lost in Translation," is no more nourishing than a bonbon.
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The one, transfixing virtue of Marie Antoinette is its unembarrassed devotion to the superficial. There is no morality at play here, no agony other than boredom, and, until the last half hour, not a shred of political sense. The fun dies out of the film--in fact, the film itself expires--when Coppola suddenly starts dragging in discussions of the American Revolution.
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With its ho-hum performances, muddled point of view, inert plot and pedestrian writing, all that's left to appreciate are the sumptuous costumes, elaborate hairstyles and rococo production design, which are not enough to sustain any movie, even one set in the gilded splendor of Versailles.
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It's a daring move, focusing on the isolated splendor and interior dramas, and letting the politics remain at most a distant rumble; Coppola deserves credit for offering a different, and probably truer, perspective on life as a royal. But the perspective rarely lends itself to compelling filmmaking.
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Like licorice, Marie Antoinette is a confection you either love or hate, and both affects seem tied to your feeling about the director herself and her apparent identification with Louis XVI's bride. For my part, I can definitely say that I love licorice and hate Marie Antoinette. But I'm still wrestling with the enigma of Sofia Coppola.
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