Sofia Coppola's 2016 Marie Antoinette, notwithstanding its gorgeous regalia, period settings, and stunning tableaux (called typical "Hollywood sauce" by Le Figaro) is, in fact, a high-concept variant on the bio-pic, as rigorous and strict in its ideology as a play by Brecht. Fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette lives in a Vienna palace longer than a football-field. She has been married-off to the Dauphin of France, a feckless chap who, later, becomes the equally hapless Louis XVI. The notion is that this royal marriage will cement the relationship of alliance between the two Catholic powers, France and Austria. Marie conveyed by carriage, with a couple of ladies-in-waiting to the French border, where she is unloaded, stripped naked, and, then, clad in French finery -- no one in France wants the future Queen to be seen wearing an Austrian gown. At Versailles, she is expeditiously married to the Dauphin, a eccentric young man whose only passion seems to be the study of the history of keys and key-making. The Dauphin rides out with his hounds and an entourage of 30 huntsmen every morning and, except for some stilted dinners, has nothing to do with his bride. At night, he is sexually indifferent to the young woman and, for her part, she seems pretty unenthusiastic about the prospect of producing heirs for the Kingdom of France. Years pass and no child is born to the couple. At last, Marie's brother comes to Court and explains to the King (Louis the 15th having died of smallpox) that having sex is like inserting your key into a lock. This does the trick with the King and he conceives four children with Marie Antoinette, including two sons who are heirs to the throne. Marie has an affair with a handsome Swedish officer named Fersen. But he returns to his martial duties. (The affair is wholly inconsequential and the liaison goes nowhere.) Louis XVI has been persuaded to support the American rebels to spite France's ancestral enemy, Britain. These expenses bankrupt the realm and lead to unrest. Marie Antoinette, who has spent lavishly on gambling and shoes, is blamed for the country's economic woes and is labeled "Madame Deficit." There's an uprising and angry rebels surround the palace. Marie with her children are spirited out of the palace at Versaille. The last shot shows the wreckage of her bedroom at Versaille after her flight at dawn. Mercifully, the film doesn't show us anything of the fate that later befell Marie or the ravages of the French Revolution.
Kirsten Dunst is very good as the child-bride and, later, Queen of France. She has unassuming habits and would rather play with her lap dogs and children at the pastoral Petit Trianon built for her by the King. She chattily says "hello" to everyone at the Royal Court (something that is not done) and applauds enthusiastically at the opera, also a breach of etiquette. Her social trajectory is plotted by her applause at operas -- the first time she does this everyone is aghast but, gradually, courtesy requires that the entire audience join her in her applause. Later, when she applauds spontaneously, near the end of the movie, she has fallen prey to the intrigues at the court and no one at all, follows her example.
The film is odd and static. For 2/3ds of the movie, Marie doesn't have sex with the Dauphin and, later, the King. (The King is played with remote indifference by Jason Schwartzman, an example of the film's eccentric casting. Schwartzman's part is underwritten to the point of non-existence, but this is intentional, part of the film's design. Other people in the movie are SNL's Molly Shannon, Rip Torn, Marianne Faithfull and Steve Coogan.) Most of the movie is about people demanding that Marie copulate with her husband and this not being accomplished. Once, the King figures out what is required of him to do his duty, he performs in an acceptable manner and, in fact, sires four children, one of whom dies. But by the time, an heir is born, the film's plan requires that the jig be up for the royals and the movie accelerates rapidly toward its ending. For the languorous first 2/3rds of the movie, the film shows us various aspects of royal intrigue, including rivalry between the disreputable Madame DuBarry, the old King's mistress and the relatively innocent, if also catty, Marie. (DuBarry is played by the horror actress Asia Argento and she is suitably venal and cruel.) Nothing much happens for most of the movie -- the high point is a party after which Marie and some of her cohorts stay awake to greet the dawn, a lyrical sequence that is referenced, at least visually, by the concluding scenes in the film when Marie with the King and her children flee Versailles, also in the cold, indifferent light of dawn. The viewer, at first, waits anxiously for something to happen. But nothing happens at all and, as I watched this movie, after the midpoint, I was rooting for Coppola and company to maintain their weird integrity and eschew any kind of dramatic conflict, political intrigue, or other staples of the standard bio-pic -- and, true to her rather austere version of the narrative, Coppola sticks to her premises. The ending of the movie is underplayed and as inconsequential as everything that preceded it. Marie's entire life is lived inside of a bubble of aristocratic and royal privilege -- we are never given so much as a glance at what life is like outside of the gilded halls and mirrored corridors of Versailles (and before the palace in Vienna). Marie literally has no contact with anyone but servants, sycophantic court ladies, other royals, and her children. The makes the scenes of her pretending to be a milkmaid at Petit Trianon and petting her goats and sheep particularly pathetic. The cataclysm that sweeps her away seems to have no real motive and there is no sense of politics or political reality (beyond court intrigue) in the movie. The disaster that will sweep Marie away is unseen, unexpected, and leaves her baffled.
The movie is luminously shot with a palette that suggests Watteau. The soundtrack is as eccentric as the casting -- the music is upbeat pop tunes from the eighties, songs by New Order, The Cure, Siouxsie and Banshees and others, including Bow Wow Wow's cut of "I want Candy" and a transcendentally weird version of "Fools rush in (where angels fear to tread)". The movie features lots of shots of royal bling, closeups of jewels (huge emeralds and sapphires and diamonds), thousands of high-fashion shoes, and every possible variety of lusciously textured gown and lingerie. Food is filmed in mouthwatering close-ups, mostly elaborate pastries and macaroons with other treats engineered with complicated culinary art. But despite all the lavish attention paid to costumes, enormous wigs and hairdos, jewelry, and lavish banquets, the film's splendor conceals an iron fist. Coppola, in her way, is just as rigorous as Roberto Rossellini in his The Taking of Power of Louis XIV -- the movie is about how power is exercised at a royal court and how the accoutrements of royal power isolate and imprison those who must live by them. Marie never meets a peasant -- hell, she never even meets a financier or representative of the bourgeois class; she is completely isolated from anything approaching real life and doomed accordingly.
Marie Antoinette is demanding. It's scrupulous plotting of its non-plot and its non-narrative is boring and claustrophobic. But boredom is the point of the film and I think the picture has been largely misunderstood. In the opening shot, we see Marie sprawled like a candied confection (she is pale as vanilla) on a chaise lounge; with her fingers she picks at a four-or-five-layer cake next to where she reclines. This is the image of Marie Antoinette that has come down to us through history. The film doesn't really deny the reality of this image but, rather, explains how luxury and noble privilege can be a prison every bit as confining as the Bastille.
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