Marie Antoinette

Pro­pelled by the post-punk dis­so­nance of Gang of Four, Marie Antoinette is Sofia Coppola’s anthem of teenage kicks. It’s a sump­tu­ous retool­ing of the life (but not death) of the French Dauphine, ripped from the ample bosom of the Hab­s­burg empire and thrust, at 14 years old, into the gos­sip, gam­bling, shop­ping and shag­ging of Versailles.

Though it’s based on Anto­nia Fraser’s com­pelling slice of revi­sion­ist his­to­ry, Marie Antoinette: The Jour­ney (where the maligned queen is trans­formed into a roman­tic hero­ine, mar­tyred by the mass­es hopped up on high-qual­i­ty roy­al porn), this is no peri­od piece. This is Coppola’s chick flick epic, her propul­sive prom night fan­ta­sy; a hedo­nis­tic dream­scape of the chil­dren of France.

Giv­en unprece­dent­ed access to Louis XIV’s post­card palace, Cop­po­la has shot a film of daz­zling sun­set hues and inti­mate pas­tel sub­tle­ty – an end­less expanse of mar­ble, gilt and gold. This is a world of breath­tak­ing opu­lence cap­tured in all its atten­tion-grab­bing extrav­a­gance: every plate is a star­burst of sculpt­ed sug­ar; every cos­tume a con­fec­tion of jew­els and silk; every hair piece a pow­dered tow­er of taffe­ta and flowers.

Out­side, in the Petit Tri­anon and mod­el vil­lage, Lance Acord’s pho­tog­ra­phy falls under the same lan­guid spell as Marie Antoinette her­self, cap­tur­ing the shim­mer­ing haze of half-remem­bered dreams with a gauzy, pas­toral beauty.

Kirsten Dun­st has that zeit­geist vibe that echoes Coppola’s sig­na­ture cool. Clutch­ing a dog to her chest, she looks young and frag­ile, like Dorothy dis­ap­pear­ing down a yel­low brick road that real­ly is paved with gold. But where once she was the teen queen of Bring It On and Get Over It – younger and chub­bier with curves and dim­ples – in her post-block­buster ​‘grown up’ career she’s got one of those off-the-rack Hol­ly­wood bod­ies, hard­ened and sheer, and her eyes are a lit­tle less wide. There’s none of the open, hon­est naivety that once made her seem so fresh and sexy.

Marie Antoinette’s is a dra­mat­ic ride. It takes in death and dis­as­ter, cru­el fate, bad deci­sions, worse sex and great par­ties. But here she’s a feck­less Val­ley Girl whose emo­tion­al range peaks at, like, super awe­some, and bot­toms out at total­ly lame. This is The OC meets the 18^th C, all arti­fice – all sparkle and shim­mer and strike a pose.

When a doc­tor comes to exam­ine the roy­al cou­ple to find out why they’ve failed to pro­duce an heir (a noose around the Dauphine’s neck that stayed tight for sev­en years) the cam­era drifts life­less­ly to the tableau of bed­spreads and wall­pa­per beyond. Few lives have pitched so vio­lent­ly from high to low, but Cop­po­la seems less inter­est­ed in the queen’s state of mind, and far more fas­ci­nat­ed by the state of her furnishings.

In her book, Fras­er points out that any re-telling of the queen’s sto­ry must include ​“The ele­giac as well as the trag­ic, flow­ers and music as well as rev­o­lu­tion and counter-rev­o­lu­tion.” But Cop­po­la nev­er got past page one – appar­ent­ly nev­er got to the juicy bits about impris­on­ment and exe­cu­tion, about the way Marie Antoinette changed and grew in the last years of her life.

And okay, it isn’t meant to be a spir­it­ed his­tor­i­cal apol­o­gy; it’s a mood piece, a tone poem that’s ethe­re­al, ephemer­al and cool-as-fuck. That might sell you a few more tick­ets to the teen crowd that think you’re oh-so what it’s all about, but the very thing that Cop­po­la cher­ish­es as a film­mak­er – that moment-to-moment imme­di­a­cy that made Lost In Trans­la­tion ten­der and heart­break­ing – gives Marie Antoinette the fick­le tran­sience of a fash­ion shoot.

She claims to see this ​“good-heart­ed, cre­ative per­son”, but that’s not what’s on screen. With no sense of con­text, this is the same old Marie Antoinette – the same crea­ture of van­i­ty, excess and ego­tism that the Parisian libel­listes ate up and spat out.

She has the keys to the king­dom, but not her own cage, and as she lash­es out by splash­ing out, along with the cash she frit­ters away any sym­pa­thy for her future – for that guil­lo­tine for­ev­er lurk­ing round the cor­ner. How bad can it have been, this list­less life? Why wor­ry about her fate when she appar­ent­ly didn’t?

It doesn’t help that as the film rolls on, struc­tur­al prob­lems emerge. Most dam­ag­ing­ly, there’s nev­er any clear idea of when or where we are in Marie Antoinette’s life. Maybe that’s a delib­er­ate reflec­tion on the her­met­ic world of Ver­sailles, where days and years are marked in idle plea­sures. But it’s amaz­ing to dis­cov­er (in ret­ro­spect) that you’ve wit­nessed 23 years pass.

Towards the end you sense that Cop­po­la is think­ing the same thing, as there’s a sud­den flour­ish of the visu­al trick book to cre­ate that illu­sion of for­ward momen­tum, but it’s too lit­tle too late. Like­wise, the few scenes that require lengthy expo­si­tion are gripped by a kind of paral­y­sis; like nobody was sure what to do when the cam­era tracked back from the wallpaper.

Despite this stud­ied veneer, there are moments when the arti­fice cracks and you’re assailed by an over­whelm­ing melan­choly. At a masked ball in Paris, or the queen’s eigh­teenth birth­day in Ver­sailles, this court of kids final­ly bursts into life, and only as they come to life do you remem­ber how close they are to death. There’s a fin de siè­cle poignan­cy to these scenes, espe­cial­ly the birth­day par­ty, where the ​‘chil­dren of wealth’ see in the dawn – a sun­rise of heart-rend­ing false hope.

But these occa­sions are rare; Marie Antoinette has an emo­tion­al pulse so faint, you feel like break­ing into the pro­jec­tion booth and giv­ing the reel the kiss of life.

At its best, Marie Antoinette – the film and the queen – is seduc­tive and gor­geous and a lit­tle naïve. It opens with verve and promise, per­fect­ly cap­tured by the cheek of that Gang of Four refrain: ​“The prob­lem of leisure / What to do for plea­sure?” But it’s anoth­er line from that song that best describes this film – it’s not seduc­tion, it’s a coer­cion of the sens­es, and we are not so gullible.