|
Marie Antoinette
Movie Wiki
Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. It was released in the United States on October 20, 2006, by Columbia Pictures.Fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna (Kirsten Dunst) is the beautiful, charming, but naïve, youngest daughter of Austrian empress Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull). She is selected by her mother to marry her second cousin, the Dauphin of France, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), thereby sealing an alliance between the two rival countries.
Marie Antoinette travels to France, relinquishing all connection with her home country, and meets Louis XV (Rip Torn and her future husband the Dauphin.
The two are married shortly thereafter. Toasts are drunk to their happy
marriage and they are encouraged to produce an heir as soon as
possible, but the next day it is reported that 'nothing happened' on
their wedding night.
As time passes, Marie Antoinette, who is never without an unwanted
entourage of servants and noblewomen, begins to find court life at
Versailles stifling. The courtiers disdain Marie Antoinette as a
foreigner – an Austrian, no less – and consistently blame her for not
having produced an heir.
The Court in France is rife with gossip, and Marie Antoinette
consistently ruffles feathers by defying its ritualistic formality: she
accompanies her husband and his friends on hunting excursions, claps at
the opera, and often snubs other members of the aristocracy and royal
family.
Over the years, Maria Theresa continues to write her daughter, giving
advice on how to impress and seduce the Dauphin, and also advises her
to stop snubbing Madame du Barry (Asia Argento)
(Louis XV's mistress, a commoner of low birth, who is widely disliked
at court) as this is akin to criticizing the King's behavior. Marie
Antoinette finally speaks to Madame du Barry, remarking at a reception
that, "There are a lot of people at Versailles today", although as she
leaves with Ambassador Mercy, she remarks that those would be the last words she would ever say to du Barry.
Marie Antoinette gradually begins to adjust to her new life,
surrounding herself with a few confidantes. She finds solace in buying
elaborate gowns and shoes, eating lavish pastries (produced for the film
by Ladurée),
and gambling with her ladies. One night, she, her husband, and some
friends go incognito to a masked ball in Paris, where she meets Count Axel von Fersen (Jamie Dornan), a Swedish count.
When his predecessor dies, Louis XVI is crowned king of France, and
both he and his wife express fear at being too young to reign.
Despite the growing poverty and unrest among the French working
class, Marie Antoinette maintains her extravagant lifestyle, while Louis
continues to invest in foreign wars, sending France further and further
into debt.
Marie Antoinette's brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Danny Huston)
comes to visit, counseling her against her constant parties and
associations, advice that she ignores. Joseph then meets the King at the
Royal Zoo and explains to him the "mechanics" of sexual intercourse in
terms of "key-making" – as one of the King's favorite hobbies is locksmithing.
That night, the King and Marie Antoinette have sex for the first time,
and on December 18, 1778, the young queen gives birth to a girl, Marie Thérèse. As the baby princess grows, Marie Antoinette spends much of her time at the Petit Trianon, a small chateau on the grounds of Versailles. It is also at this time that she begins a romantic affair with von Fersen .
As France's fiscal crisis worsens, food shortages and riots become
commonplace. Marie Antoinette's image with her subjects has completely
deteriorated by this point: her luxurious lifestyle and seeming
indifference to the struggles of the masses earn her the title Madame Déficit.
Beginning to mature, she focuses less on her social life and more on
her family, and makes what she considers to be some significant
financial adjustments, including a decision to stop purchasing diamonds.
A few months after her mother's death in November 1780, Marie
Antoinette gives birth to a boy, Louis-Joseph, the new Dauphin. She also gives birth to a second boy, who dies..
As the French Revolution
comes into fruition, the royal family resolves to stay in France,
unlike much of the nobility. Rioting Parisians force the family to leave
Versailles for Paris. The film ends with the royal family's
transference to the Tuileries. The last image of the movie is a shot of the Queen's bedroom, destroyed.
[edit] Production
The production was given unprecedented access to the Palace of Versailles.[1]
The movie takes the same sympathetic view of Marie Antoinette's life as
was presented in Fraser's biography. Coppola has stated that the style
for shooting was heavily influenced by the films of Wong Kar-wai, Terrence Malick, and Milos Forman, Coppola was also influenced by Lisztomania by Ken Russell.[citation needed]
While the action happens in Versailles (including the Queen's Petit Trianon and the Hameau de la reine) and the Paris Opera (which was built after the death of the real Marie Antoinette), some scenes were also shot in Vaux-le-Vicomte, Château de Chantilly, Hôtel de Soubise and at the Belvedere in Vienna.
Milena Canonero
and six assistant designers created the gowns, hats, suits and prop
costume pieces. Ten rental houses were also employed, and the wardrobe
unit had seven transport drivers. Shoes were made by Manolo Blahnik and Pompei,
and hundreds of wigs and hair pieces were made by Rocchetti &
Rocchetti. As revealed in the "Making of" documentary on the DVD, the
look of Count von Fersen was influenced by 1980's rock star Adam Ant. Ladurée made the pastries for the film; its famous macarons are featured in a scene between Marie-Antoinette and Ambassador Mercy.[2]
[edit] Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack contains New Wave and post-punk bands New Order, Gang of Four, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants, The Strokes, Dustin O’Halloran and The Radio Dept. Some scenes utilize period music by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Antonio Vivaldi and François Couperin. Electronic musician Aphex Twin's work is also present.
[edit] Response
In several 2006 interviews, 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 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
People magazine's movie critic, Leah Rozen, wrote in her wrap-up of the 2006 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."[3]
American film critic Roger Ebert
gave the film four stars out of four. He states that, "every criticism I
have read of this film would alter its fragile magic and reduce its
romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film.
This is Sofia Coppola's third film centering on the loneliness of being
female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how
to value and understand you." [4]
On the Rotten Tomatoes
website, which compiles mostly North American reviews, the film has
been given a "rotten" rating with 54 percent of contributing critics
giving it positive reviews.[5]
[edit] Box office
In the United States and Canada, the film opened with $5,361,050 in just 859 theaters, with $6,241 per theater.[6] Nevertheless, the film quickly faded, grossing $15 million in Northern America, and has grossed around $61 million worldwide, making it one of the few underperformers for distributor Columbia that year.[6]
The film made over $7 million in France where the film is set, but
fared less well in the United Kingdom where it took only $1,727,858.[7]
[edit] Nominations and awards
[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 19. 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
[edit] External links
|