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Product Description
The vibrant retelling of the classic story of marie antoinette the naive austrian princess who is thrown into the scandal-ridden world of the french aristocracy when she is betrothed to king louis xvi. While still a teenager marie antoinette conquers her fears and becomes frances iconic queen. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 04/22/2008 Starring: Kirsten Dunst Rip Torn Run time: 123 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Sofia Coppola

Amazon.com

While much was made of the fact that Marie Antoinette elicited boos at Cannes, the many favorable reviews attracted less attention. Inspired by Antonia Fraser's biography, Sofia Coppola fashions a portrait that's just as dreamy as The Virgin Suicides, her first literary adaptation, and the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation. Set to a soundtrack of post-punk (a conceit that adds more interest than resonance), the teenaged Marie (Kirsten Dunst, quite good) may be shallow, but she's rarely unsympathetic. The story begins in the late-18th century as the Austrian Archduchess agrees to marry Louis-Auguste (Jason Schwartzman). After bidding adieu to her mother, Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull), she travels to France, where King Louis XV (Rip Torn) sets the rules--and the list is endless (Judy Davis' Comtesse de Noailles is the primary enforcer). As for the Dauphin, he's just a boy, really, with more interest in his key collection than their marriage bed. Should Marie produce an heir, it might be enough to sustain her--since life is nothing but an endless shopping spree--but clouds gather on the horizon as an impoverished populace rises up against their extravagant leaders. Coppola merely suggests what happens next, although history paints a darker picture. Filmed in and around the Chateau of Versailles, Marie Antoinette is a riot of rustling gowns, sparkling jewels, and Manolo Blahnik-designed shoes. To say that style trumps substance does its maker a disservice, but the look of the thing does leave the deepest impression. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Extras from Marie Antoinette (click for larger image)

Featurette:
On the filming of Marie Antoinette:
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Film Clip:
"The Introduction"
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Film Clip: "The Royal Treatment"
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Stills from Marie Antoinette (click for larger image)

Beyond Marie Antoinette at Amazon.com

The Book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey

More Period Pieces With A Twist

The Films of Kirsten Dunst

Customer Reviews: Read 313 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Let Them Eat Ganache October 23, 2006
159 out of 198 found this review helpful

Booed at its Cannes premiere this year (as Anthony Lane in the "New Yorker" states: "Who was in the audience, Robespierre?"), "Marie Antoinette" is that rare bird: a film that is beautiful on the outside (everything about the physical movie is eye-poppingly gorgeous: Costumes, Food, Pastries, Shoes {yes shoes...in fact I can't remember a film in recent memory of which almost every reviewer credits the shoes to the designer: in this case, Manolo Blahnik}) as it is on the inside: studiously, exhaustively researched, thoughtfully written and impeccably directed by Sofia Coppola who gives us a revisionist portrait of M. Antoinette that is humane, heartfelt and above all measured and compassionate. There is no doubt who is in charge of this huge production and Coppola's obvious tender touch is evident everywhere throughout this film.
This "Marie Antoinette" is told from a Marie as a girl perspective: she is very young, she is giddy, very much impatient of the French Court and it's customs, very much into clothes and shoes yet she matures, has children, takes a lover grows wise, becomes the subject of gossip, learns to love Louis and becomes a loving and doting mother. This is a fully fleshed out role of a victim, really: a victim of politics, of circumstances beyond her control.
At the center of this film is the tragic, sad and revelatory Marie of Kirsten Dunst. Dunst's Marie is the outsider, reviled by the French court (called "L'Autrichienne" by most...the Austrian *itch), lost and 14 when she first arrives in France, literally stripped of everything Austrian, Dunst navigates this difficult role with ease. But this is not a surface performance...not at all. Dunst digs deep and reveals all the nuances, all the insecurities, all the strengths of one of the most hated women in all of history. Dunst plays Marie from her gut and she leaves her blood as well as her tears on the celluloid. Do not be swayed or fooled by the naysayers: this is a towering performance of the first order.
Coppola is getting a lot of bad press or her use of 80's music on the soundtrack (Bow Wow Wow, Gang of 4, The Cure) but she has so far in her two previous films ("The Virgin Suicides" and "Lost in Translation") proven to be nothing if not a populist, a product of her environment, a lover of popular culture. In "M.A." the music serves the story effectively by blasting away and preventing any cobwebs from growing on what could have been a stodgy Historical drama.
Though Coppola will not be beheaded for making this wonderful film, it is apparent that most people just don't get "it." With all that said the fact remains: "Marie Antoinette" contains one of the most beautiful images ever committed to film: Marie in a carriage, having been forced out of Versailles, deep sadness in her face, clutching her children and holding Louis's hand, the camera pointed out at the grounds of Versailles, she poignantly says "Goodbye" to the only place she can claim as home...as the carriage takes her family to Oblivion.

4 out of 5 stars

Eluding Publicity October 21, 2006
79 out of 104 found this review helpful

There are actually several Marie Antoinette biographies out there that paint Marie Antoinette in a sympathetic light. This film is based on one of those biographies written by Antonia Fraser. But the film is by no means a faithful transcription of Fraser's biography to screen; in fact Antonia Fraser has gone on record as saying that the Marie Antoinette of Sofia Coppola's film is not the Marie Antoinette of her biography. What you get in Sofia Coppola's film is a character that is largely the product of Sofia Coppola's imagination which means among other things that this film is a very personal take on this historical figure.

At times it seems Sofia Coppola seems to want us to see her Marie Antoinette as a product of her cultural context but at other times it seems that Coppola wants to radically decontextualize this figure and allow us to see that the distance between 18th century France and our cultural context is not that great. On the one hand we are invited to observe Marie Antoinette as she was put on display before the courts of her time and on the other hand we are invited to see Marie Antoinette with her gaurd down behind the scenes in the personal space of her bedroom. While most people will not be able to relate with Marie Antoinette's royal upbringing and lifestyle most people will be able to relate with the fact that there is a great distance between Marie Antoinette's public and private lives because all of us have at one time or another felt the great disparity that exists between social formalities and decorums and our natural selves. Most of us treasure our privacy and value time spent alone as the most important time of the day but Marie Antoinette is caught in a world where she has virtually no privacy. In fact her most private moments are what interest the court and the public the most. Hence her private life is not really private at all. Being deprived of personal space at a time in her life when she needs it the most (early teen years) is something that Marie Antoinette never gets used to and even if we can't relate to every aspect of her life we can certainly relate to this. There are really several moments in Marie Antoinette's life that are presented in ways that allow us to identify with her: her search for a confidante, her wish to express her own identity, her first feelings of love. By focusing less on Marie Antoinette the royal and more on Marie Antoinette the teen Sofia Coppola offers her audience a figure that they can relate with and even like. As personable as this character is, however, we are only allowed a very limited access to her. Though we see her in her private rooms all that we know of Marie Antoinette in this film is based on surfaces and appearances and appearances are always vague, always enigmatic.

Certainly few films have been so thoroughly dedicated to the purely visual as Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Filmgoers looking for a compelling plot or character might be nonplussed by this extravagantly realized piece of visual art that shuns the usual narrative strategies of the film biography. Though we catch fleeting glimpses of Marie Antoinette both in public and in private we are kept at a distance from the real dramas that are affecting her life. On one occasion we do see her break down after visiting her brother-in-laws newborn and are thus given a glimpse of the pain she feels at not yet having conceived a child of her own but these candid moments are rare. The film does not have a lot of dialogue and we are never really allowed into Marie Antoinette's thought process. Also the film does not proceed along any particular narrative line; instead it moves in a rather impressionistic way from one thing to the next and one time span to the next, sometimes without any sort of transition, and thus theres not a lot of connective tissue linking the various scenes together. One of the advantages of this compelling near-silent anti-narrative approach is that Sofia Coppola is free to craft a portrait based not on the usual accumulation of scenes that dramatize what we already know from the historical record and existing biographical data but on an accumulation of isolated vignettes. Each vignette presents us with another angle from which to view the enigma that is Marie Antoinette even though none of these visual cues supply us with any concrete or definitive answers as to who she is. The resulting film is thus less a literal rendering of a life than an open-ended evocation. As a result it is a much freer kind of biography; one might even call it an anti-biography because the person being studied remains a mystery for the most part. This film is not for the literal minded but for those who enjoy the enigma of surfaces. This film, like the paintings of Velazquez, or Goya, or Manet offer rich but elusive surfaces to the eye; Marie Antoinette, like the faces in these paintings, looks straight at us but tells us virtually nothing or at least tells us nothing in a literal way. With Marie Antoinette Sofia Coppola is experimenting with film as a purely visual medium instead of as a medium that relies on familiar narrative forms and she effectively uses this experimental anti-narrative technique to offer a Marie Antoinette that does not fit into any of the narratives that have been told about her.

This film experiments with style and invites us to examine style as an alternative language--a language of appearances--that disrupts the usual narrative forms that cinema is so fond of. If you leave behind your usual need to follow a traditional narrative and find literal meanings and allow yourself to simply gaze upon this films many polyvalent surfaces then you will be in a position to appreciate this films original approach which does not attempt to capture Marie Antionette by defining her but shows her time and again attempting to elude her captors.

3 out of 5 stars

A sherbet coloured fairyland March 15, 2007
33 out of 43 found this review helpful

I was very, very hesitant about seeing this film, especially after I had started hearing the buzz that it was a sort of punk rock look at history. Not exactly my sort of thing. To balance it, I also heard that it would be mostly based on Antonia Fraser's excellent biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, a book that I had enjoyed very much. So, I compromised and waited for the dvd release to watch it.

The film opens as a fourteen year old Archduchess Antoine (Kirsten Dunst) is informed by her formidable mother, the Empress of Austria (Marianne Faithful) that she will be making a marriage alliance to none other than the Dauphin of France, Louis. It will be to the glory of both nations, and young Antoine will be able to help Austria's position in the French court, especially after she becomes Queen of France when old King Louis XV (Rip Torn) dies. Full of excitment -- not the least of which is escaping her mother's scrutiny -- Antoine leaves Vienna and her past behind to endure the rituals that will make her the future Queen.

But Marie Antoinette, as she is newly christened by the French, finds out that wanting is not nearly the same as having. She must dress French, speak French, and even her dogs and ladies will be French. Her husband, Louis, is barely older than she, shy and awkward, and his only interest is in locksmithing and hunting. Soon enough, there are whispers and gossip that Antoinette is frigid, infertile, that the marriage is unconsummated, and that her own position in France is percarious at best. Louis (Jason Schwartzman) tries to be a good husband, and is clearly interested in his bride, but something is clearly wrong. The old king dies, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become the monarchs, but there still is not an heir and it's not until Antoinette's brother the Emperor (Danny Huston) arrives for a friendly visit does anything get resolved in that direction.

In the meantime, Antoinette indulges in fashion, shopping, gambling and anything she can to soothe the disappointment of having an inept husband, and a court that still sees her as an outsider. Trapped in the rigid heirarchy and etiquette of Versailles, Antoinette struggles along, finding momentary respite from dulling routine by whooping it up with her friends Lamballe and Polignac, and when the dashing figure of Count Axel Fersen (Jamie Dornan) appears, she is more than prepared to fall in love.

By now, Louis and Antoinette have managed to get things to work in bed, and they have a pretty young daughter, with two more babies to follow. This gives Antoinette some security, and to be fear of the spectre of being returned to Austria. But trouble is arising in France, first with crop failures, and the extravagance of the Court, and the French support of the American Revolution against the English. Soon, the Queen is being whispered of as Queen Deficet and blamed for the fact there is famine.

Once again we get the infamous "Let them eat cake!" line, along with gossip of Antoinette having lesbian lovers among her ladies. Yes, it's told for a laugh, but I would love to see a film that didn't use it.

Finally, the people have had enough, the Bastille is attacked by the mob, and the mob turns on the King and Queen at Versaille. The last we see of them is riding away from the gand chateau, bound for imprisonment and eventual dates with the guillotine in Paris.

And that's it. Nothing about the flight to Varennes with Fersen's help, nothing about the war that started to restore Louis and Antoinette to the throne, nothing about the Queen's bravery in captivity and her spirited defense when she was put on trial for her life. It all just simply -- ends.

To say that the ending feels awkward is an understatement. All that I can figure is that the director, Sophia Coppola, was running out of time, and decided that she was bored with the project after Versailles and decided to leave the audience dangling.

And now, for the music. The soundtrack is a rather interesting compliment for the film. The use of punk music, especially in the party scenes is a touch that actually worked, much to my surprise.

Other plus points for the film are the art direction and costume designs, which are spot on, showing the over the top extravagance and decadence of the period, and the fact that the film is actually shot in and around Versailles -- can't beat that for a location on French monarchy! Even the food and flowers are given an artistic touch -- I don't recommend this film if you have a sweet tooth, you will be ravenous by the end.

But there are problems, and a few serious ones at that. One sequence of shoe shopping -- they are Manolo Blahnik?s, by the way -- there is a glaring shot of a modern pair of sneakers. This anachronism blew the film for me, and I found it stupid and pretentious of the director. The other big problem was having the affair between Fersen and Antoinette being consummated physically -- while I'm certain that they were in love with each other, I doubt that she would have gone so far as to commit adultery, given how religious she was, and she was rather prudish.

Two casting moves didn't quite feel right. Rip Torn being cast as Louis XV, aging, raddled and saddled with his mistress, du Barry, just did not do it for me as a decadent, pleasure loving, indolent king. That American ripsaw accent appearing every time he opened his mouth was annoying as hell. Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI didn't feel too right either -- while he's able to play the part with a befuddled look, looking at any portrait of the actual king shows a portly, languid man who's more interested in the dinner table than anything else.

What threw me most of all were the very modern accents and use of modern slang such as "wow" and "okay." The accents are pure modern Californian American, and the squeaky drawls and screeching from the female actors again shattered any illusion that I had that I was in the eighteenth century.

Yes, I know this was Sophia Coppola's vision of Marie Antoinette. But it's a glaring, jarring and at times, annoying look that will be certainly dated in about a decade or so. The version of the Queen's life with Norma Shearer in the title role is still the best -- and still watchable decades later.

The DVD has England and French language tracks and subtitles, two deleted scenes, various trailers, previews for other films, a 'making of' featurette that helps to explain some of the odd turns that this film made, and a very silly short that has Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI acting like a modern MTV star showing the viewer around Versailles in a send up of 'Louis XVI's Crib.' Very funny to watch, but it also catches the atmosphere of the film. While it's not done deadly serious, the fluff factor overall is at times overwhelming and a bit off-putting.

Overall, this gets only a three star rating, and I wouldn't recommend it save as a curiosity. Go elsewhere for a more complete view of the Queen.

Somewhat recommended.

2 out of 5 stars

Great Eye Candy, But I Wanted Something More January 23, 2007
20 out of 26 found this review helpful

Probably I would be one of the minority reports here, but I should be honest. I didn't mind if Marie Antoinette is played by Kirsten Dunst speaking American English because I knew Sofia Coppola's revisionist biography is not a schoolteacher's lesson about history in France. And I liked the mixture of colorful costumes and modern pop music which is unique and imaginative (thanks to the photography of Lance Accord and costume designer Milena Canonero). But to me, Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" turned out unexpectedly boring especially during its second half of it even though it tells a story of a person who lived a very eventful life. Retelling a familiar story is a good thing, but when the new story bores you, that would be a big trouble.

I won't repeat the life story of Marie Antoinette. The new film presents her as a more vivacious, playful, or often brave and vulnerable person than is generally supposed. Casting Kirsten Dunst is a success to achieve this goal, and her portrait of the Queen of France shows undercurrent loneliness and emptiness of her life in Versailles. Colorful costumes and pop numbers like Bow Wow Wow's `I Want Candy' perfectly match her image as a young woman living the life of unreality.

Sadly, as in her previous `Lost in Translation,' Sofia Coppola fails to create and develop anything original out of the great materials she is given, except good acting from some of the cast and the gorgeous mood of the place. While the film traces the life story of Marie Antoinette and her relationships with Louis XVI, Louis XV and his mistress and her affair with Count Fersen, it never sheds light on the inner side of her enigmatic character which still intrigues us. Here Louis XVI is reduced to a shy and weak youth; Madame Du Barry a disreputable woman, and Count Fersen a hunky aristocrat. All these hackneyed characterizations only help make the persona of Marie Antoinette less credible and more melodramatic.

Of course Sofia Coppola has a right to show her own vision, or what she wants us to see, and sorry, but having interested in Marie Antoinette, I expected more. This film is a real eye candy which is good, but if this is only about the gorgeous costume and hairstyle, what's the point of re-telling the story of this famous historical figure now?

5 out of 5 stars

Must all these people watch? March 27, 2008
20 out of 21 found this review helpful

Marie Antoinette DVD

This movie is about the life of the teenage Austrian girl who married King Louis XVI of France. I had read about her saying "Let them eat cake" for years, when she asked why the peasants were rioting during the French Revolution and was told that they had no bread to eat. What I didn't really realized until watching this movie was how sheltered and out of touch she was. She was only 14 when she was packed off to marry Louis, who she had never seen before, was stripped and inspected for blemishes when she reached the hand off point( how embarrassing) and had something like forty people sitting around her bed watching on her wedding night. "Nothing happened, apparently." Well duh?

Kirsten Dunst gives an excellent performance as the teenage queen, in this movie which starts off set in Austria in 1768. She spoke German, by the way, not French.

Highly recommended for students of History who want a better insight of this period of European history. Other items about Marie Antoinette include:

Marie Antoinette: The Journey

The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette: A Novel

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France

Another book related to Marie Antoinette is Norby and the Queen's Necklace (Norby Series)

Gunner March, 2008

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