Coppola’s Confection: Marie Antoinette

A small confection makes itself into a rather grey world: Sophia Coppola’s latest movie tends towards the key lime rather than the sublime. Availed of blood and money, Coppola has made a movie that lingers in a formal world, but she is unable to escape a very present world of ideas that linger only as long as they are on the surface. Kirsten Dunst plays the queen like a paper doll: clothes are bent off her and onto her by others, and it is the moments where a nipple peaks from behind a nightgown, that slips down, or gets wet in her bathtub, that comes closest to the candy that Coppola seems to be trying to offer us.

Wandering around the Versaille halls and grounds, finding more to satisfy her physical needs in her surroundings than those offered by her husband, Dunst seems to be playing the daughter of a wealthy Hollywood type who wants a hug and only gets another BMW. Along side Dunst is Jason Schwartzman. Between the two of them they say eight words while eating, and the eight words are delivered deadpan in an attempt to convey the inconvenience of embarassing emotions. Shot straight on, the dining scenes look as if the monarchs and their meals are marionettes, but once Coppola has pulled the strings the first time, their is little else to invent.

Photographically the film is either a mess, or the projection was soft. There was nothing special about the color, the composition, or the editing that could give the film any formal clout: it is a film about confections, but there never is a moment where the confection shocks you with its looks, taste, or composition.

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