Director Sofia Coppola's boring biopic wastes talent of star Kirsten Dunst
'Marie Antoinette' a disappointment
By Phil Villarreal
pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.19.2006
Off with its head.
Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" flops into theaters like a guest who shows up too early for a party, then proceeds to get wasted and blurt out inappropriate comments until finally catching the hint in everyone else's eyes that it's time to leave.
Every bit as shallow as its subject is said to have been, the period biopic's chief indiscretion is that it's boring. How could the life story of a wild, hard-partying monarch be so dull? If you really want to know, buy a ticket.
You're supposed to look morosely upon the beautiful young queen and feel sorry for her because she was ripped away from her life in Austria, cursed into a loveless royal marriage in her teens, alienated from normalcy by layers of cumbersome protocol and unfairly victimized by gossiping subjects.
The film does cause you to stare at Marie and shake your head in sorrow — not for the queen, though, but for the actress playing her. Poor Kirsten Dunst has been burned again in a rare bad film from an otherwise impeccable director. Last year, it was with Cameron Crowe in "Elizabethtown."
A talented actress who's screaming to crack the upper recesses of serious young actresses, Dunst will have to wait for another chance because Coppola gives her so little material to work with. For 90 percent of the movie, Dunst is forced to stand around looking glum.
It's easy to see why Dunst was attracted to the project. Coppola was on fire following "Lost in Translation," and the prospect of Paris Hilton-izing a historical figure, gilding her story with modern flourishes, seemed like a slam dunk.
Maybe the problem is that Coppola insisted on writing the script herself. The screenplay skims over or omits most of the interesting moments in the queen's life in favor of ennui. Marie's final years, in which she leapt into the good graces of some historians by shedding her frivolous ways, became politically engaged and showed courage to protect her family against bloodthirsty revolutionaries, are nowhere in the movie.
Most of the plot is dedicated to the bedroom troubles between Marie and her frigid husband, King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). The public and the royal court, including Marie's domineering handlers, harass Marie about the couple's inability to produce an heir. Marie is stuck with the entire blame, even by her own mother, who sends chastising letters. Never mind that Louis has no interest in storming his wife's bastille.
Marie's other chief source of distress is her lack of privacy. She's a prisoner of privilege, robbed of privacy or self-determination. Attendants dress her, keep track of her at all times and refuse to let her reach for any items on her own. The monarchy throbs with severe signs of its slavishness to bizarre, obsessive-compulsive rituals and disconnect from the people it governs. There's no sign until the third act that the public is starving, suffering from a bread shortage while Marie depletes the royal treasury on baubles, gambling and gardens.
Coppola wrestles with half-baked ideas and underdeveloped concepts. She freely tosses in Americanization and anachronisms. Characters speak in an odd mixture of American- and British-accented English with a few French words tossed in. Some of the music is pop, such as "I Want Candy," which plays while Marie gets an expensive makeover.
Maybe the idea is to draw a parallel from the wealthy excesses of America and the poverty in the rest of the world, but granting this crepe-thin movie any political message is quite a stretch. Indeed the drab, misconceived film should spark revolutionary changes but not on the global scale: Dunst needs a new agent.
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