Cor­sage – first-look review

What starts with a bath­tub ends with the sea in Cor­sage, the lat­est from Aus­tri­an film­mak­er Marie Kreutzer. Is it breath­ing tech­niques Empress Elis­a­beth of Aus­tria is prac­tis­ing in the film’s open­ing scene, mak­ing her maids count how long she can spend under her bath water, or a dal­liance with death? Is she look­ing for a way to end her life, or to save it?

Kreutzer’s cos­tume-dra­ma is a stun­ning­ly invig­o­rat­ing take on the peri­od piece, a vibrant film that rejects the staid con­for­mi­ty of the genre and finds its inti­mate angles. Osten­si­bly a film about a roy­al woman in cri­sis, not dis­sim­i­lar to the recent Spencer or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Cor­sage rev­els in the per­son­al­i­ty and con­vic­tion of Empress Elis­a­beth (played with wit and verve by the bril­liant Vicky Krieps).

Near­ing her 40^th birth­day, the Aus­tri­an monarch is well aware of how the pub­lic will look upon her as an old­er woman. She must both enter­tain and dis­miss this – when she faints at a roy­al engage­ment there is an assump­tion that her expert­ly tight­ened corset (demand­ed by her­self) must have cut off her oxy­gen sup­ply, but a swift­ly fol­lowed scene depicts her teach­ing her cousin how she mas­tered fak­ing the collapse.

Elis­a­beth toys with avoid­ance tac­tics and schemes to get her­self out of the dai­ly roy­al per­for­mance she is expect­ed to endure. On a quest for per­son­al free­dom, she trav­els to Eng­land and Bavaria where for­mer lovers once taught her to ride hors­es and embrace her lib­er­ty. She pos­es for por­traits dressed in ball gowns with white fur trim and red jew­els, smok­ing lilac Sobra­nies – a vision in kitsch. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Judith Kaufmann’s cam­era is rarely sta­t­ic, speak­ing to Elisabeth’s desire to roam, while the rich grain of 35mm adds a sat­is­fy­ing and beau­ti­ful tex­ture to the film.

There is an intrigu­ing sense of inte­ri­or geog­ra­phy inside the palace that rep­re­sents Elisabeth’s home and prison. In between the lav­ish­ly dec­o­rat­ed bed­rooms and din­ing halls are blank and bare hall­ways that look as though they are made from con­crete. Ser­vants linger here, wait­ing for com­mands, but the director’s choice to fre­quent­ly return to these spaces gives them as much val­ue as any­where else. They become a sort of back­stage, the link between the the­atres of Elisabeth’s life in which she per­forms day in, day out.

While marked­ly dif­fer­ent from Kreutzer’s pre­vi­ous film, the excel­lent sub­dued psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller The Ground Beneath My Feet, Cor­sage is anoth­er exam­ple of the director’s knack for astute depic­tions of women unrav­el­ling, search­ing for a sense of self. There is a dark­ness to the nar­ra­tive – nods to child loss and Elisabeth’s men­tal decline – but there is a play­ful­ness, too, which cre­ates space for lev­i­ty and release as she plots her most cun­ning trick yet: how can she com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear while still main­tain­ing a pub­lic persona?

With her troupe of ladies-in-wait­ing by her side, the Empress relax­es into a specif­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine sphere of loy­al­ty and sup­port that guides her for­ward. Kreutzer crafts an ele­gant por­trait that grants this his­tor­i­cal fig­ure a new lease of agency and autonomy.

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