Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola allows herself many liberties in this pleasantly anachronistic take on the life of Louis XVI’s young bride, portrayed here as a young woman looking for a foothold in life.
It’s certainly an unusual approach: a costume drama accompanied by the music of Adam and the Ants and The Cure. Coppola’s biggest fear was that MARIE ANTOINETTE would become a classic costume drama. She need not fear that: a historical portrait of the Archduchess of Austria (1755-1793) it certainly is not. The extravagant court of Versailles is merely the backdrop for the anxiety, uncertainty and boredom of the adolescent girl Marie Antoinette. At fourteen, she is married off to fifteen-year-old Louis XVI. The court expects a pregnancy, but Louis shows little sexual interest. This attitude makes Marie Antoinette’s life at court very difficult.
For Coppola, Marie Antoinette’s life story provides all the ingredients needed for depicting universal feelings like loneliness and rebellion. The soundtrack with music of the New Romantics of the early 1980s is a very deliberate choice, because Coppola considers these musicians to be interpreters of ‘impetuosity, hedonism and decadence’. (ej)