Marie Antoinette (2006 film)

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Marie Antoinette
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Produced by Sofia Coppola
Ross Katz
Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Antonia Fraser (book)
Sofia Coppola
Starring Kirsten Dunst
Jason Schwartzman
Judy Davis
Rip Torn
Rose Byrne
Asia Argento
Marianne Faithfull
Molly Shannon
Steve Coogan
Cinematography Lance Acord
Editing by Sarah Flack
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) Flag of France France
May 24, 2006
Flag of the United States United States
October 20, 2006
Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
October 20, 2006
Running time 123 min
Country United States
Language English, some French
Budget $40,000,000
Gross revenue $75,000,000 (Worldwide)
IMDb profile

Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biography film written and directed by Sofia Coppola about the life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

The film is loosely based on the historical biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, and ends with the fall of Versailles. It is the first full-length biopic of Marie Antoinette to be made in the English language since the 1938 Oscar-nominated film, Marie Antoinette starring Norma Shearer and Tyrone Power.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna (Kirsten Dunst), affectionately known as Antoine, is the naïve, 14-year-old and youngest daughter of Austria's empress Maria Theresa. She is selected by her mother to marry her second cousin, the Dauphin of France, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), and seal an alliance between the two rival countries. On a small island in the middle of the Rhine, a symbolic crossing-over ceremony takes place. Per tradition, the soon-to-be Dauphine must relinquish anything belonging to the foreign court from which she comes; this includes not only all her clothing and personal effects, but also her friends, ladies-in-waiting, and even her dog. Emerging from out of a tent onto the French side of the river, Maria Antonia becomes the Dauphine Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette soon meets Louis XV (Rip Torn) and his grandson, her soon-to-be husband – the Dauphin. After very little time spent getting used to her new surroundings, Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin Louis are officially married. Toasts are drunk to their happy marriage and they are encouraged to produce an heir as soon as possible. That night, after the consecration of their marriage bed, the royal household leaves, waiting in anticipation. The next day it is reported to the King that 'nothing happened'.

As if an increasingly fruitless marriage weren't problematic enough, Marie Antoinette is finding Versailles to be very different from Vienna. Courtly life at Versailles is stifling for the Dauphine, who is never without an unwanted entourage of servants and noblewomen who neither know nor care for her. The courtiers at Versailles disdain Marie as a foreigner – an Austrian, no less – and blame her for not having produced an heir. She is not allowed even to dress herself, and must take breakfast in a great hall where hundreds of nobles observe her and her husband eat sparingly from enormous displays of food.

The Court in France is rife with gossip. The King's mistress, Madame du Barry (Asia Argento), is the least liked among the ladies at court, particularly because it is known that she was not previously allowed at court until King Louis made her a comtesse to make her appear "respectable" to her royal counterparts. Rumor also has it that Marie Antoinette has no love whatsoever for her husband; she is looked upon by many as a cold and distant Austrian, even though she is portrayed as being warm and affectionate to those around her. Marie Antoinette ruffles more feathers by defying the high formality of the French court. She accompanies her husband and his friends on hunting excursions, passing out food to them and occasionally to the animals, claps at the opera, and often snubs other members of the aristocracy and royal family. She receives a letter from her mother, Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull), the Holy Roman Empress, warning her that an unconsummated marriage is easily annulled and encouraging her to inspire the Dauphin to sexual fervour. That night, Marie Antoinette attempts to seduce her husband but her advances are rebuffed.

Time passes in the same fashion and Marie Antoinette's mother continues to write to her giving advice on how to impress and seduce the Dauphin; also telling her to stop snubbing Madame du Barry as this is akin to criticising the King's behaviour. The Court continues to snipe at Madame du Barry, criticising her fashion and her behaviour, demeaning her as a harlot whose title was bought for her by the King. Marie Antoinette gives in, for fear of falling out of favour with the King, since her marriage is not on solid ground. She finally condescends to speak to Madame du Barry, remarking at a reception that, "There are a lot of people at Versailles today." As she leaves with friends, the Dauphine remarks that those would be the last words she would ever say to du Barry.

Marie Antoinette finally finds a handful of confidantes and begins to adjust to her new life. She finds solace in buying lavish gowns and shoes, eating elaborate cakes and pastries (produced for the film by Ladurée), and gambling with her ladies.

The Dauphin and his brother go on a hunting excursion and Marie tells him that she will be humiliated if her sister-in-law, Marie Josephine, Comtesse de Provence (Marie Thérèse, Comtesse d'Artois in reality), becomes pregnant before her. Her husband tells her not to worry, that everything will go swimmingly. His Majesty tells his advisor that he has no intention of breaking the alliance with Austria and sends a doctor to see Marie and Louis XVI. Pressure continues on all sides for Marie to become pregnant, but the Dauphin seems unwilling to do more than sleep beside her. Marie Antoinette's sister-in-law, the Comtesse de Provence, eventually gives birth to a baby boy, Louis-Antoine.

As France's political and economic situation worsens, Marie Antoinette becomes more detached from life outside the palace and her lifestyle grows more hedonistic and decadent. One night, she sneaks out with her husband and friends to attend a masked ball where they continue in their frivolity.

Louis XV passes away and Louis XVI is crowned as the new King of France. A few years later Marie celebrates her 18th birthday with a lavish party. She continues her spending spree and remains indifferent to the growing poverty and unrest among the French working class. The new King is young and inexperienced and begins spending more money on foreign wars, sending France even further into debt.

Marie Antoinette's brother Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Danny Huston) comes to visit, counselling her against her constant parties and associations, though she fails to heed his advice. Joseph then meets the King at the Royal Zoo and (in the presence of an African elephant using its trunk to play with the King's buttons) explains to him the "mechanics" of sexual intercourse in terms of "key-making" – as one of the King's favourite hobbies is making keys. That night, the King and Marie Antoinette make love for the first time. On December 18, 1778, the young queen gives birth to a girl, Marie Thérèse. Although she would prefer to breastfeed the child herself, this is not socially acceptable. The baby princess grows older and Marie Antoinette spends much of her time at the Petit Trianon, her own private sanctuary on the grounds of Versailles. It is also at this time that Marie Antoinette enters into an alleged affair with Count Axel von Fersen (Jamie Dornan).

France continues to subsidize the American Revolution, despite the enormous expense. Ironically, the Revolution that worsened the plight of the French peasantry soon inspired them to start one of their own. Food shortages grow more frequent, as do riots in Paris. Marie Antoinette's image with her subjects has completely deteriorated at this point. Her luxurious lifestyle and apparent callous indifference to the common people result in unflattering and obscene political cartoons and earn her the title "Queen of Debt". The Queen is now a mother and has begun to mature. She focuses less on her obligations as a socialite and more on her family, and tones down her opulent lifestyle, including a decision to stop purchasing diamonds. A few months after her mother's death in November 1780, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a baby boy, Louis-Joseph, the new Dauphin. Next she gives birth to a second boy Louis-Charles who, after his older brother Louis-Joseph dies of tuberculosis, becomes the Dauphin of France. Finally, a fourth child, Sophie-Béatrix, is born but later dies before her first birthday. The royal couple are shown watching the tiny coffin being taken for burial to the Royal crypt of Saint-Denis with all the Royal Capet ancestors.

The French Revolution comes into full fruition and an angry mob begins a march from Paris to Versailles. As most of the nobility flees the country, the royal family resolves to stay. The rioting sans-culottes reach the palace and the King and Queen are forced to leave the following morning. The last image of the movie is a shot of the royal couple's room, destroyed. Unmentioned in the film are the royal couple's later incarceration, trial and execution.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Production

The production crew was given unprecedented access to the Palace of Versailles[1], where the real Marie Antoinette lived from the time of her marriage in 1770 until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. The movie takes the same sympathetic view of Marie Antoinette's life as was presented in Fraser's biography.

While the action happens in Versailles (including the Queen's Petit Trianon and the petit hameau) and the Paris Opera (which was built after the death of the real Marie Antoinette), some scenes were also shot in Vaux-le-Vicomte, Chateau de Chantilly and Hôtel de Soubise.

Some eyebrows were raised at the casting of young American actress Kirsten Dunst in the title role. Dunst had previously collaborated with Coppola on the 1999 film The Virgin Suicides.[citation needed]

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: Marie Antoinette (soundtrack)

The film's anachronistic soundtrack contains songs by 1980s New Wave and post-punk bands such as New Order ("Ceremony"), The Cure ("All Cats Are Grey", "Plainsong"), Siouxsie and the Banshees ("Hong Kong Garden (With Strings Intro)"), and Bow Wow Wow ("Fools Rush In", "Aphrodisiac" and "I Want Candy") as well as newer material by The Strokes, Aphex Twin, Dustin O'Halloran, and The Radio Dept.

Some scenes, however, utilize Baroque music, principally composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Three of his pieces are in the film:

The film also features "Les Barricades Mystérieuses", composed by François Couperin.

[edit] Response

In several 2006 interviews, Sofia Coppola suggests that her highly stylized interpretation is very modern in order to humanize the historical figures involved. She has taken great artistic liberties with the source material and the film does not focus simply on historical facts – "It is not a lesson of history. It is an interpretation documented, but carried by my desire for covering the subject differently." Perhaps because of this unusual approach, the film was booed at early screenings at the Cannes Film Festival. At the opposite extreme of opinion, British historian Lady Antonia Fraser, author of the acclaimed bestselling biography upon which the film is loosely based, proclaimed that the film was "beautiful" in an interview with The Times.

In early reviews the film's loose adherence to the facts and offbeat style had already divided critics. Roger Ebert in his Cannes Log on his website, explained, "But now let's step back and be fair. Yes, there was booing. But I was present at the screening and would guess not more than five people, maybe 10, booed. Many others applauded. Booing is always shocking to North American critics. I am not sure I have heard booing more than once or twice in all my years at the Toronto, Sundance, Telluride, Chicago, Montreal or New York festivals. In Europe, they boo all the time, sometimes because they think a film is bad, sometimes because it is (according to them) politically incorrect."[2] Roger Ebert gave the movie a rating of four stars (out of a possible four) in his Chicago Sun-Times column.[3]

People magazine's movie critic, Leah Rozen, wrote in her wrap-up of the Cannes Film Festival that, "The absence of political context, however, upset most critics of Marie-Antoinette, director Sofia Coppola's featherweight follow-up to Lost in Translation. Her historical biopic plays like a pop video, with Kirsten Dunst as the doomed 18th century French queen acting like a teenage flibbertigibbet intent on being the leader of the cool kids' club."[4]

On the Rotten Tomatoes website, which compiles mostly North American reviews, the film has received an average rating of 6/10. Some 54% of reviews were "fresh", meaning generally positive, and 46% were "rotten", as of January 2008.[5]

[edit] Box office

In the USA the film opened with $5,361,050 in just 859 theaters, with a respectable $6,241 per theater.[6] Nevertheless, the film quickly faded, grossing $15 million domestically, and has grossed around $60 million worldwide. This decline can be largely blamed on the fact that few theatres actually showed the film on the advertised released date. Despite the fact that the trailer advertised "Opening everywhere October 20th", the movie only showed up in larger cities on its opening weekend and in select theatres. It took nearly a month for it to trickle down to most local cinemas and by this time it was too late for a decent gross.[6]

The movie, however, did extremely well in France, gathering 1,108,058 people in total,[7] considering it had to compete with blockbuster-movie X-Men: The Last Stand, which gathered 2,782,870 people in total. The movie has been in heavy rotation on cable television since the DVD was issued.

[edit] Nominations and awards

Academy Awards record
1. Best Costume Design, Milena Canonero

[edit] Inaccuracies

The film contains a number of factual errors,[10], most of them done deliberately by director Sofia Coppola as a way to represent the timelessness of the themes of isolation presented in the movie; a common issue for the director. Among these are the following:

  • In one scene while Marie Antoinette is getting ready, a pair of blue Converse sneakers are visible. Coppola has stated in interviews that the shoes were purposely put in the shot to portray Marie Antoinette as a typical teenage girl, despite the time she lived in.
  • The scene of the masked ball was filmed in the Grand foyer and on the Grand escalier of the Palais Garnier (a.k.a. the Paris Opéra), which did not open until 1875, more than eighty years after Marie Antoinette's death. The music is also noticeably not of the period.
  • In one scene, Louis and Marie are informed that the Comtesse de Provence was in labor. Nevertheless, the real Comtesse de Provence, wife of Louis' younger brother, Louis Stanislaus, comte de Provence, was childless. The infant in question, the Duke of Angoulême, was the son of Louis' youngest brother, Charles, comte d'Artois.
  • In the film, a portrait of Marie Antoinette and three children is replaced with one where the youngest has been painted out. This is after they have shown that the couple had three children. A funeral is then shown, giving the impression that the youngest of three has died; however, the youngest did not die. The first son (and second child), Louis Joseph (1781-1789) died first, and the baby in the portrait, Louis Charles (1785-1795), actually outlived Louis Joseph to eventually become Louis XVII of France. The fourth child, Sophie-Beatrix (1786-1787), did die as a child, so perhaps they tried to conflate these two deaths in the film. But then, there should have been 4 children in a 1786 portrait, replaced by 3 children (with the baby missing) in a 1787 portrait. The 3 to 2 children change in a 1789 portrait would not have had a baby in it.
  • The flowering tea Antoinette prepares during her elder brother's visit to Versailles (which she explains was sent by the Qianlong Emperor of China) is a relatively new way of serving tea. Blossoming teas were not created until the 20th century.

[edit] DVD release

The Region 1 DVD version of the movie was released on February 13, 2007. Special features on the disc include a "making of" featurette, two deleted scenes and a brief parody segment of MTV Cribs featuring Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI of France. The Region 2 DVD version, including the same special features, was released February 26, 2007. No commentary is available for the DVD. In France, the double-disc edition included additional special features: Sofia Coppola's first short movie Lick the Star and a BBC documentary film on Marie Antoinette. A collector boxset, Coffret Royal, was also released in France and included the double-disc edition of the movie, Antonia Fraser's biography, photographs and a fan. The Japanese edition was released on July 19th. This two disc edition includes the same extra features as the North American release though it also includes the American, European and Japanese theatrical trailers and Japanese TV spots. A limited edition special Japanese boxed set contains the two disc DVD set, a jewellery box, a Swarovski high-heeled shoe brooch, a hand mirror, and a lace handkerchief.

[edit] References

  1. ^ MARIE ANTOINETTE - Production Notes...CinemaReview.com Movie Reviews, Movie Contents, Moviegoer Opinions and Much More!
  2. ^ Ebert, Roger (2006-05-25). Cannes Film Festival. Suntimes. Retrieved on 2006-10-21.
  3. ^ Ebert, Roger (2006-10-20). Marie Antoinette. Suntimes. Retrieved on 2007-02-01.
  4. ^ Kirsten's Marie Antoinette Fizzles at Cannes. People. Retrieved on October 21, 2006.
  5. ^ Marie Antoinette - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
  6. ^ a b Marie Antoinette (2006)
  7. ^ Marie-Antoinette : Box-Office
  8. ^ BoxOffice Week Editie. Sneakpoint.com. Retrieved on October 21, 2006.
  9. ^ Gotham Awards
  10. ^ Marie Antoinette (2006) - 3 factual errors

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films written and directed by Sofia Coppola
Lick the Star (1998, short) • The Virgin Suicides (1999) • Lost in Translation (2003) • Marie Antoinette (2006)