New Review! MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006, dir. Marie Antoinette)

"You're considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion, but I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity."

- Sofia Coppola

If this is truly the case, Ms. Coppola, I do not think you did a good job at conveying this idea in your latest venture. Oh yes. I understood what you wanted to acheive with Marie Antoinette. You've been very vocal about how you don't really care what the French think and how you don't really make movies for anyone in particular (besides your doll collection). You just wanted to make something pretty and girly. I can see how your detached and icy demeanor might be very cool when you're pregnant by a French rocker and posing for Marc Jacobs ads but, come on, there's a lot to get passionate about here. Shooting in Versailles! Blahnik designing shoes! Dunst's trembling naked body! Wigs! Cakes! My $11! And yet... this wasn't so much a movie as it was a discontented rich girl sigh in my general direction.

From the opening moments to the delicate woods to the frenized parties to the fountains to the sunrises and sunsets, you can almost audibly hear Ms. Coppola saying: "Yeah. Versailles. Whatever." As the film began, I realized I had been looking forward to this movie like I had anticipated my high school plays. I didn't expect it to be any good as a whole. I did expect parts of it to be good. And I was interested in seeing the individual actors in their roles as well as how Coppola utilized her enormous budget. However, as the film pushed on, I amused myself by imagining Ms. Coppola directing certain sequences: "Let's just... um... let's just shoot the fountains turning on... because... I think it... it will look GREAT... and I think we'll most likely use it for something... probably."

I feel the same way about this film as I did about Moulin Rouge. Yes. Yes. Yes. Fun. Fun. This is great. I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING! If you don't FRAME your shots, I don't know how I'm supposed to FEEL about them. And if you're goal is to have such cluttered and frenetic composition that I have to choose what to look at... make the shots LAST LONGER. This is, like, Directing 101 here. I know we're in the post-MTV generation here, but is it too much to ask that you have a point of view. That you make some choices about where I'm supposed to be looking and why. Otherwise, I'm lost. And it's not because I'm an idiot. It's because it's NOT MY JOB, as the viewer, to make those decisions. That's what a DIRECTOR does.

It was not the lack of a point of view that frustrated me as much as the film spent two hours resisting taking the obvious point of view that Coppola wanted to take: "There is nothing wrong with being a spoiled rich girl." There are many moments where Coppola could have made this clearer (btw, I would've respected that choice immensely) but she lacks the courage or has too much modesty to do so. Instead she opts to wander around with a camera like her first two features and assume a movie will eventually materialize. Moulin Rouge succeeded because its insane lust for pure Old Hollywood by way of an acid flashback was just bizarre enough to almost create a new genre. (Sit down, Baz, I said ALMOST) Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, went for a Barry Lyndon by way of Vogue magazine and Ms. Coppola could've pulled it off if she'd had the patience/foresight/interest to finish this sentence.

"This is the story of ___________."

Baz: A young idealistic artist who falls in love with a dying prostitute.

Sofia: Shoes! Cakes! Wigs! I wanna shoot in Versailles!

BOTTOM LINE: Girls may enjoy devouring it as a dateless confection. Boys, unless they are passionate Sofia Coppola fans, should skip all together. Anyone hoping for an engaging period piece should stay far away. Honestly, just watch the trailer and flip through the Vogue spread.