MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006) **1/2 It's more like The Princess Diaries than a serious historical flick, but Sofia Coppola makes her point: Why have we demonized Ms. Antoinette, when she was just a somewhat shallow but well enough meaning gal, who was doing the same as all the other royalty of Europe, and she had more troubles than anyone should ever have to put up with? Kirsten Dunst is wonderfully winning in the lead (as she has to be, to make us think anything different than the rabble): kind, unassuming, not terribly bright, and certainly not interested in anything social or political beyond the party at hand. She reminds me of a beautiful poem that Patti Smith wrote about the early life of Marianne Faithfull (who plays Kirsten's mother here). You should look it up. Jason Schwartzman is at least as good in near as difficult a role, Louis XVI, but it's not his movie and he neither pretends that it is nor tries to make it so. Which is part of why it's such a fine performance. Asia Argento is perfect for these Court of Versailles movies, terrifically bitchy, but she's not quite as brilliant here as in La Reine Margot, which of course no one else could have been either. It's not a film with that kind of reach. Sofia presents a very pretty film, the world as she figures Marie saw it, with artsy shots enough to serve as a entry to the world of high cinema for…well, you know, girls who have grown up a bit since they grooved on The Princess Diaries five years earlier. It's of course not quite so innocent as that earlier film, but the feel is similar…and we are left with the sense that Marie Antoinette was just a kid, like all the rest of us, looking to make a party with the best of whatever's around. And history handed her a decidedly mixed grill on that one, and historians have been being mean to a perpetual teenager ever since.
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