Marie Antoinette
Director: Sofia Coppola
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 3.0
Somewhat plodding but curious film about the famously beheaded Austrian functions better as thinly veiled autobiography for Coppola herself, whose Lost in Translation also hinted at her personal life. The cinematic and literary worlds are littered with auteurs who make careers out of self-obsession, but so few of them are women (especially in cinema) that it's nice to see someone as young and talented turn the medium on herself - all the readings of the picture, comparing Marie to Sofia, Rip Torn to her father, etc. seem plausible. In fact, this movie seems intentionally stripped bare by its bachelorette, calm and collected - a mood piece about consumerism, a lonely young girl thrown into a world in which she's laughed at (or envisions being laughed at), and her tragic death. To those who balk at the 80's music and casting of a Jersey girl: do you really want the Merchant-Ivory version of this? I don't think you do.
