The bored and the beautiful -- Marie Antoinette
Leisurely storytelling: Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn
Director: Sofia Coppola
Genre: Drama
Storyline: A beautiful queen bored out of her wits, decides to indulge.
Bottomline: So does Sofia
This movie would be a straight man’s nightmare. Especially, if one isn’t really an avid star gazer!
Think pink. Hot pink, as the girls would call it. So what if the colour wasn’t invented until the 1950s? It looks good on Dunst and the movie clearly isn’t meant to be an instructional, educational video to help kids-who-can’t-read pass the history exam.
You know Marie Antoinette was hanged, you know about the revolution, you know, or rather you thought she told the people to eat cake if they didn’t have bread.
So Sofia seems to say: “All right, now, do you want some more of those absolutely useless facts or would you rather watch a film that tells you about none of them and yet tells you an untold and possibly even more interesting story? You will get bored while watching it. But you are supposed to get bored to really experience her life.”
Assuming only women would watch it, she pampers them with a sensory overdose – the dieter’s nightmare on plates, food that should take a bow on runways, yes - exquisitely designed sinful food, free flowing wine, days at the spa, satin-sheeted comfort, hours in the bathtub, holidays, vacations and parties, clothes that should be mounted on pedestals, costumes to make women wish period dressing was back in fashion, music that wouldn’t have been out of place in the ‘Princess Diaries’ or ‘What a girl wants’ and opulence that would make Bhansali blush.
Lagging in pace
Boredom is the single largest achievement of the film. Because, at that moment, you are living her life, you are privy to the dumbing-down of an intelligent, discerning queen who had possibly no other alternative but to lie back and well, be fashionable. It isn’t until halfway through the film that the prince realises that Marie wasn’t exactly a black widow.
The simplicity of the storyline is simultaneously its strength and weakness. With nothing much going on, if you are a girl, you can concentrate on all the hairdos, the interiors, the minute details. If you are a guy, you can be all moony-eyed looking at Kirsten Dunst slip out of bed. Your gratification ends right there.
Dunst fits the role like a glove and parades through it with enviable ease. Pink meets pop in this highly original dissertation of an unexplored dimension of a woman who has been just a name in textbooks.
Sofia mixes opera with pop, radically blending the two together with determined inconsistency, indulging herself in leisurely storytelling.
With the pop elements, the anachronisms, the mismatch of accents, and the occasional boom mikes serving as signposts to remind you that this is not a faithful representation, this modern day chick-flick-interpretation may only find takers among women.
