FILM REVIEW – MARIE ANTOINETTE 2006 Zoetrope Films.
There is a lot to commend about this film biopic, notably the location work in Versailles, and the cinephotography. There is some unusual casting at work, i.e., Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithful, who play their roles surprisingly well, and in the leading role, Kirsten Dunsk, best known as Spiderman’s girlfriend Mary Jane, who makes no effort to bury her American accent.
The film over-exploits its photography by giving us long tracking shots of coach and horse journeys through the French countryside. The film shows Louis 16th (Jason Schwartzmsan) as a total wet blanket, unable and unwilling to consummate his marriage, for which M A Takes a great deal of blame and malicious gossip.
The bulk of the film is one long slumber party, cake eating and shoe-shopping trip (in the Imelda Marcos tradition), as Marie virtually bankrupts France. We see nothing of the revolution until the peasants turn up on the doorstep and take everyone away for execution. The film ends with the royal family being taken away from Versailles. We don’t see Marie’s famous spirited trial defence statement or her execution at all. The revolutionaries are seen as mean spirited killjoy neighbours shutting down a rowdy party.
The film has its moments, i.e., Marie, arriving at court as a naïve fourteen-year-old girl, played by an actress in her twenties, to find about thirty servants, each jostling to take care of a separate garment as they dress and undress her.
The Vivaldi and Mozart music that gives the film an ambient atmosphere is marred half way through by a descent into punk rock soundtrack, from which the film recovers later. A very odd film that shows how not to film historic events.
Arthur Chappell
http://arthurchappell.me.uk/film.review-marie.antoinette.htm
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