Highly theatrical and yet also intimate and informal, Marie Antoinette lets its story slink almost casually through its lovingly composed and rendered images.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
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Reviews Counted:170
Fresh:92
Rotten:78
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Lavish imagery and a daring soundtrack set this film apart from most period dramas; in fact, style complete takes precedence over plot and character development in Coppola's vision of the doomed queen.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for sexual content, partial nudity and innuendo.
Runtime: 2 hrs 3 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:2006
Box Office: $15,962,471
Synopsis: Oscar® winner Sofia Coppola brings to the screen a fresh interpretation of the life of France's legendary teenage queen MARIE ANTOINETTE. Betrothed to King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the naïve... Oscar® winner Sofia Coppola brings to the screen a fresh interpretation of the life of France's legendary teenage queen MARIE ANTOINETTE. Betrothed to King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the naïve Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) at the age of 14, she is thrown into the opulent French court which is steeped in conspiracy and scandal. Alone, without guidance, and adrift in a dangerous world, the young Marie Antoinette rebels against the isolated atmosphere at Versailles and, in the process, becomes France's most misunderstood monarch. Kirsten Dunst stars as the youthful princess whose fateful life became the stuff of myth and legend. The story begins when 14-year-old Marie Antoinette is whisked away from her family and friends in Vienna, stripped of all her possessions and deposited in the sophisticated and decadent world of Versailles, the lavish royal court near Paris. Marie Antoinette is merely a pawn in an arranged marriage meant to solidify the harmony between two nations. Her teenage husband, the Dauphin Louis (Jason Schwartzman), is heir to the French throne. But Marie Antoinette is ill prepared to be the kind of ruler for whom the French populace yearns. Beneath her finery, she's a sheltered, frightened and confused young woman, surrounded by vicious detractors, insincere flatterers, puppet masters and gossips. Trapped by the conventions of her station in life, Marie Antoinette must find a way to fit into the complex and treacherous world of Versailles. Adding to her woes is the indifference of her new husband, Louis. Their marriage goes unconsummated for an astonishing seven years. The awkward future king proves to be a disaster as a lover, sparking grave concerns (and relentless gossip) that Marie Antoinette will never produce an heir. Overwhelmed and distraught, Marie Antoinette seeks refuge in the decadence of the French aristocracy and in a secret love affair with the alluring Swedish Count Fersen (Jamie Dornan). Her indiscretions are soon the talk of France. Whether she is being idealized for her impeccable style or vilified for being unforgivably out of touch with her subjects, reaction to Marie Antoinette is always extreme. Yet, slowly, as she matures, she begins to find her way as a wife, mother and Queen — only to be tragically swept up in a bloody revolution that alters France forever. -- © Columbia Pictures [More]
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Coogan, Judy Davis
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Coogan, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Asia Argento, Marianne Faithfull, Aurore Clement, Molly Shannon, Shirley Henderson, Jamie Dornan
Director: Sofia Coppola
Director: Sofia Coppola
Producer: Francis Ford Coppola, Ross Katz
Studio: Columbia Pictures
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Reviews for Marie Antoinette
A fun fantasy frolic... ambitiously stylized... [but] too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.
Without Dunst, though, and the emotional complexity that she creates, the effort in its entirety would be a brash bit of stunt filmmaking gone wrong.
Ms. Coppola and her colleagues have also taken an anachronistic approach to her material with an anarchic pop-music score suggesting the complacent spirit of a contemporary spoiled teenager infatuated with the glistening surfaces of her generation.
Coppola succeeds at her main goal: Marie and the court are presented to us, not embalmed in stilted "period" language and affect, but with more familiar trappings.
Coppola brilliantly conjures the young queen's insular world, in which she was both isolated and claustrophobically scrutinized. While not celebrating Marie Antoinette's reign, Coppola clearly sympathizes with a girl who was less heedless than naive.
What Coppola delivers is a fresh take on history that makes it come to life in an unexpected way.
With a fresh approach, Sofia Coppola's film makes Marie Antoinette human, and sympathetic, and lets 18th-century history rock out into modern times.
A startlingly original and beautiful pop reverie that comes very close to being transcendent.
[Coppola] transports you to a place you've never been, makes you feel a sensation that's familiar, yet leaves you different than you were two hours earlier.
Coppola's film is a superior achievement, a story as rich and resonant as its protagonist is hollow.
Instead of turning her inside out, Coppola illustrates just how ordinary she was and how her insular world prevented her from understanding the events that eventually would end her life.
The film keeps its focus on the queen's teenness, her formation as an icon and a legend, her measure as a girl.
[It] uses an 18th century story to shed some light on how flamboyantly and shallowly some people lead their lives in any age.
This is one of the most immediate, personal costume dramas ever made, and so it’s not unseemly to consider how the writer-director and her heroine overlap.
If not so witty as Coppola's Lost in Translation, this is like a funnier and feminine Barry Lyndon.
There's no denying that Coppola has style to spare and has truly blown the dust off one's traditional biopic expectations.
A visually scrumptious version of France's iconic but ill-fated Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette.
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