BEFORE: Yep, I'm hitting the ground running - I already re-organized my list, at least for the next three months, using "Les Miserables" as the new starting point. I can't promise that there won't be breaks in the chain, but I've got an order now that I'm comfortable with, which also has the flexibility to add more films if needed, and still hit the "right" movies on Feb. 1 and March 1 as scheduled.
Upon review, this film seemed to make the most sense to follow "Les Mis", since it's also set in France, and takes place just a few decades earlier. I'll get back to more literary-themed material tomorrow. Also, I think this film has quite a bit of music in it, so there's another connection.
Speaking of compulsions, I know I said I wasn't going to link via actors, but Hugh Jackman from "Les Miserables" was also in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" with Danny Huston (last seen in "The Proposition"), who appears in this film. I can't help myself.
THE PLOT: The story of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette, from her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to the fall of Versailles.
AFTER: OK, so this turned out to be sort of the opposite of "Les Miserables", which told the story of France's downtrodden lower class. By contrast, this is about the royalty and high society of late-1700's France, and attempts to show that it wasn't always an easy go for them, either.
While I'm willing to concede that there may have been more to Marie Antoinette than her often (mis?) quoted line "Let them eat cake," and the attitude that went with it, I'm not prepared to cut her any slack, either. What a tedious life it must have been - waking, being dressed by servants, dining, trying on dresses, attending banquets, and then retiring to one's country house to relax, eat bonbons and get away from it all, and maybe have an affair or two.
OK, so there was some pressure to produce an heir, which was made rather difficult since the King seeemed to have little interest in the activities that would produce one. (Hey, Louis, you're doing it wrong...) But this was back in the days before sex ed, or even pornos, so how was he to know what to do? The royal doctor was even too polite to have "the talk" with him. The movie never specifies whether this was a, umm, mechanical problem, or one of orientation.
And another economics lesson tonight - turns out that the French, in their hatred for England, were sending money to support the American Revolution, and this may be one reason there wasn't so much money to go around in France. Sorry about that, chaps, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few necks - er, eggs.
No, I won't do it, I won't feel sorry for Marie Antoinette, though this film portrays her as a girl caught up in circumstance, with an arranged marriage and a feeling of being an outsider in the French court. Why make THIS film, about THIS person, and come at it from THIS angle? Dare I draw a connection between the subject and the director, Sofia Coppola, who is sort of filmmaking royalty in her own way?
Since she apparently never went to film school, here's a free tip from me. A movie is a collection of scenes organized in a fashion to ultimately tell a story, or serve a coherent purpose. Putting one pointless scene after another for two hours, while technically still a movie, serves no greater cause. After watching Marie loll about in the lap of luxury for an hour and a half, I was ready to storm the Bastille myself. Unless that was the point, but I kinda doubt it.
Trying to make a sympathetic film about Marie Antoinette is a bit like making a film that depicts Adolf Hitler as a frustrated painter. Oh, wait, someone did that too, it was called "Max".
With regards to the music, yes, there were modern songs here, most notably Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" and songs by The Cure, New Order and the Strokes. While it's a bit jarring, it's all used as background mood music, not as music sung by or heard by the characters, so it's technically not anachronistic, merely a convention used by the modern filmmakers. We've also got accent problems again, with American actors playing French and Austrian people, and sounding very non-European. Again, it's a convention, and perhaps a limitation of the form.
Starring Kirsten Dunst (last heard in "Anastasia"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"), Judy Davis (last seen in "A Passage to India"), Rip Torn (last heard in "Bee Movie"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "Get Him to the Greek"), Asia Argento, with cameos from Molly Shannon (last seen in "Bad Teacher"), Marianne Faithfull.
RATING: 3 out of 10 harpsichord lessons
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