Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was as misunderstood as its teenage queen
Marie Antoinette was the third in a trilogy of films about the inner lives of young women from director Sofia Coppola
Film Lists Marie Antoinette
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With the release of Gia Coppola’s new movie, Mainstream, we’re highlighting other work from the extended Coppola family.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
The 2000s were a fraught time to be a teenage girl. Countdown clocks to Lindsay Lohan’s 18th birthday, panty shots of Paris Hilton getting out of low-slung Lamborghinis, the intense scrutiny that made Britney Spears shave her head in an act of symbolic rebellion—all of these hovered in the background of girlhood during this era. Now, nearly 20 years later, Britney has been reclaimed from the snarky jokes and leering objectification that drove her to the edge, prompting a reconsideration of the misogyny of the era. And while we’re at it, Marie Antoinette could use a second look, too.
Marie Antoinette was the third in a trilogy of films about the inner lives of young women from director Sofia Coppola, who first paired with star Kirsten Dunst on The Virgin Suicides. That film, Coppola’s debut, was draped in gauzy nostalgia, but Marie Antoinette takes a more irreverent stance from the start. In the opening credits, Gang Of Four’s “Natural’s Not In It” rakes its claws over a tableau of Dunst lounging on a mint-green chaise surrounded by extravagant pink cakes as a maid slips Manolo Blahnik shoes on her feet. This postmodern style of historical filmmaking was not yet common in 2006, and critics and audiences reacted with confusion; a shot of powder-blue Converse casually dropped amid Marie’s bespoke finery is still listed as a “goof” on IMDb. (It wasn’t.)
Of course, adding winking anachronisms to period projects has become a stylish affectation in the years since; it’s just one of the ways that Marie Antoinette’s youthful decadence was ahead of its time. The film’s pastel palette—which, in an appropriately worldly touch, was inspired by a specific Parisian bakery’s macarons—is currently being replicated all over Instagram and interior design blogs. And scenes of Dunst petting lambs and picking strawberries in a frilly cotton dress now read as an ur-text for the cottagecore craze. Every time Elle Fanning looks directly at the camera in The Great, Marie Antoinette’s foot-high hairdo gains another peacock feather, and while Promising Young Woman is more self-consciously edgy, the way it uses femininity as an aesthetic weapon makes it this film’s pissed-off younger sister.
Marie Antoinette is not an angry movie, though it does delight in letting the air out of pompous palace manners. French commentators reacted violently when it premiered at Cannes, annoyed that it failed to capture the political upheaval that led to Marie’s ultimate demise (also not depicted in the film). But this absence is precisely the point, as the excesses of Marie’s cloistered life at Versailles—a litany of surface pleasures no one should apologize for enjoying—serves to highlight the empty shell under the candy coating on the teenage queen’s life. Powerful yet ineffectual, pampered yet neglected, never alone and forever misunderstood, Marie Antoinette epitomizes what Roger Ebert called “the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.” The frivolity and indulgence, Coppola posits, are simply a 14-year-old girl reacting to the absurdity of her circumstances, her youthful spirit stifled by sour-faced social climbers who view her as little more than an empty womb draped in silk ribbons.
This may well be one poor little rich girl instinctually understanding another, as critics of the film have charged. Indeed, Coppola wrote to author Antonia Fraser upon optioning her biography that she could identify with the doomed queen “coming from a strong family and fighting for her identity.” But how many books and films have focused on the disaffection of privileged young men? Are they derided as having cotton candy for brains simply because their heroes are rich and bored? In his dismissive review, Anthony Lane sniffs that Coppola’s notes on the film say “that she sought to capture her heroine’s ‘inner experience.’ Her what? This is like a manicurist claiming to capture the inner experience of your pinkie.” Fifteen years on, it seems that the failure of imagination was not on Coppola’s part but the world’s.
Availability: Marie Antoinette is currently streaming on HBO Max. It’s also available to rent or purchase digitally from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango Now, Redbox, AMC On Demand, and DirecTV.
84 Comments
The reaction to this movie proves just how fucking weird about women people were–and still are. Do you know how much “girlboss” discourse we’d have to deal with if this movie came out today? It would be agony.
Maybe it’s just that I’m getting old, but I find this idea that 2006 was somehow a different era than now (like the 1950s or something) bizarre. It was just 15 years ago! I have socks older than that.
I mean, it sort of was! Dubya was still president, the recession hadn’t happened yet, gay marriage was still a hot button issue, the Internet hadn’t yet become its own ecosystem. YouTube was barely a year old, for crying out loud!
I think the internet had been mainstream for about a decade.
Yeah. I think maybe what Cosmia means is that smartphones weren’t really a thing yet (at least not in the iPhone/Android sense).
Mainstream, yes, but nowhere near the extent that it is now.
Do you mean social media rather than just the internet?
The original comment was “hadn’t yet become its own ecosystem.”
Yeah, social media was a big part of turning the internet into its own ecosystem. When this movie was released, Facebook was only open to .edu accounts, Twitter hadn’t yet been founded, memes were still called image macros, keyboard cat was still a year away from being uploaded, Rick-rolling hadn’t occured yet.
The internet was certainly mainstream, but it was more often reacting to culture than driving it.
That’s how Conservativism happens – when you have articles of clothing that are older than entire generations, you have a different perspective on the passage of time and the importance of things.
*just* 15 years means different things when you are 20 than when you are 40 😉
I was 21 in 2006, so I like to think it was very recent.
I was…older. And already an assistant professor.
Things are a lot different now than 15 years ago, shit I’m not even young and I can recognize this.
Think about how I feel – my first conscious memory is walking home from the movies with my parents and younger brothers, and hearing people telling people “The President (JFK) Was Shot!”
There’s an entire history where I think everybody remembers Bill Cosby when he was funny (rather than a two-faced grody sexual predator), BURNS & ALLEN SHOW and THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW always in reruns, and STAR WARS where Han shot first. My 30something niece keeps pointing out to me she wasn’t even born then….
American culture in 1955 vs. 1970 vs. 1985 vs. 2000. It’s not as weird as you’d think.
This is one of those movies I have to be careful to admit I totally adore because it’s so hated by so many friends and acquaintances (as is Sofia Coppola.) But I find it’s not men who detest the movie (and Sofia Coppola) as much as women, at least in my circles, which is mostly aging hipsters who were kind of with it in their 20s in the 2000s and now are increasingly irrelevant. It might be a generational thing though? Or just the particular crowd I knew? I think part of that might have been backlash to Lost In Translation getting so much acclaim plus general weariness with the Paris Hiltons and other trust fund kids who dominated pop culture at the time.Anyway, I love this movie and will drop anything whenever it’s on. The Great was (as mentioned) obviously heavily inspired by it and I’m a pretty big fan of that series as well, it was a real highlight of Pandemic Summer.
A lot of history buffs were very concerned about this movie, especially the casting of Dunst. They freaked out when the trailer, with its punk rock soundtrack, came out. But the general consensus upon seeing the movie was generally favourable. I loved it myself and have rewatched it several times.
I love this movie too. The atmospheres, costumes, and abundance of color alone are enough to perk me up if I’m feeling down about something.
Add me to the list of people who adores this movie. The atmosphere is sublime, the soundtrack is perfect, and the constant sense of Very Small Problems distracting everyone involved from the reality of Very Big Problems happening just beyond their walls builds wonderfully. It’s one of my go-to movies when I’m feeling down and don’t quite know what to do.
I can’t say that this film really drove many conversations in my circle, but I do recall that the harshest reaction to it came from women I knew. I rather liked it, but then again, history films are my preference.
Sounds like the crowd. I am older than you, with a fairly wide circle of film enthusiasts. I don’t know anyone who detests her or her films. I remember noticing amongst friends, those who see her films (Lost…Virgin…Marie) in a theater as opposed to in a living room at home, appreciate her fine sense of visuals, relevance and the difficulties of life, and champion her talent in a more decided way. Her films will carry you along on the journey if you allow it. She is smart, intuitive and a wonderful director. She doesn’t take the easy road. I think her filmmaker skills are coming along, as did her father, while she gets older and sees the world in a different way.
Yeah, I mean the criticism of the “poor little rich girl” trope is definitely spot on. Do we really need a cute, stylish movie about Marie Antoinette that’s all about how so terribly hard it is to be Marie Antoinette? Especially, as you say, the times were already dominated by wildly wealthy 20 somethings who were famous exclusively for being the children of wildly wealthy people.
So I definitely get how people would instinctually see this movie as a sign of the continuing vapid obsession with the wealthy and be repulsed by it, regardless of how good it is on its own terms.
Eh, I dunno. I think there were a couple weird tweets about The Great, but not THAT much by way of inferno takes hurled at it.
I never had much interest in the topic of this film; no criticism of the directing, design, acting, etc. She’s famous for being decapitated. Who wouldn’t have enjoyed that litany of surface pleasures? A much more interesting character, for starters.
it always struck me as a very specific and well documented historical figure to adopt as your protagonist and then not do anything interesting with. the real historical figure is infantilized by the script, but the whole thing seems to be a criticism of those who would infantilize women and the movie isn’t clear if its being done ironically
The movie was better than I expected it to be, but there is indeed not much there in the main character.
Todd’s Marie Antoinette was a sexual dynamo who was desired by all and understood by no one.
I was just disappointed I didn’t get to see Jason Silverman and Kirsten Dunst get decapitated.
Not their characters; the actors. Although doesn’t Dunst deserve a lifetime reprieve for Bring It On?
Yeah, but then she worked with Lars von Trier so…
If not Bring It On then surely Dick. And let’s not forget Drop Dead Gorgeous.
I totally forgot that was her in Dick. Yes, I liked that movie, and far more satisfying explanation of Deep Throat/Watergate than the true story.
She was also amazing in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the second season of Fargo.
Is it possible that maybe Kirsten Dunst is just a good actress?
Nah that can’t be it.
I remember thinking at the time it was an extraordinary movie for how it evoked the sensory experiences of giddy youthfulness. But that very sensory intensity overwhelmed, to my mind, whatever Coppola might have been trying to say about how Marie Antoinette was being exploited or misunderstood. I’d rank it higher, as art, than many a critically-lauded movie about grim men doing murders or whatever. Still, a fundamental preoccupation with the pleasures of wealth is central to Coppola’s work, and I’m not sure that particular preoccupation is aging well.
I think the point was that Marie Antoinette was just a child no different than any other child today. We create these villains out these historical figures without really much consideration for the naivety of them. I think Coppola did an excellent job capturing a child put into power of a countries wealth, and the strange responsibility of it all.
She may have started as a child, but hardly stayed one.
I was not a fan of this movie then and haven’t bothered to revisit it. I loved Lost in Translation and was stoked for this, especially the intersection of the period drama with the contemporary soundtrack. And therein lies the root of my issue with it. It wasn’t the idea, which I thought had real potential, it was in how god damn HEAVYHANDED the soundtrack was. The coronation scene in particular, blaring the Cure’s “Plainsong”, struck me as particularly clumsy and artless. Then there’s “I Want Candy” or “Hong Kong Garden”. I feel like another Air soundtrack a la the Virgin Suicides would’ve served it so much better.
Hi Katie! I have a technical correction for you: “Antoinette” is misspelled as “Antionette” almost every time it’s used in the article. Beyond that, the movie was such a breath of fresh air after some fairly miserable biographical slogs in the 1990s and early 2000s. I’m so happy that more filmmakers feel free to actually show some fun in their historical fiction now.
I liked the film when I first saw it – I was I think 14 at the time, because my brother took great care to interest me in cool cinema and music – but I remember being kind of out of it when watching it because I read reviews saying how radical the anachronisms were and I kept expecting something totally wacky. Writings on it in Polish press made it seem like Marie Antoinette starts a punk band in the middle of the film. I remember thinking “yeah I’m liking this and it’s real pretty but when’s the weird stuff coming.”
Feel like there were so many people telling me to hate this when it came out, but the music and other assorted anachronisms just added to how I ended up liking this movie.
I’m with Anthony Lane on this one. I didn’t really see any evidence presented in this review for re-evaluating it, beyond that filmmakers have grown more indulgent since then or that the author personally liked it.
One perfect aspect of this film was the completely stellar soundtrack. Every track is perfect, and the opening song “Natural’s Not in It” by Gang of Four remains one of my favorite songs of all time.
I was about 12 when this came out, and my favourite thing to do was go to Apple’s trailers website and watch previews for movies I’d probably not be able to convince my mom to take me to. Pretty sure the Marie Antoinette teaser trailer is responsible for introducing me to New Order.
Oh, so I guess we were the same person back in 06! I did literally the same thing, go on the Apple trailers website and watch everything. Yeah, that whole soundtrack converted me to post-punk music.
I love the soundtrack. The smash cut from Plainsong to New Order’s Ceremony is amazing.
Extremely memorable for me for featuring Aphex Twin, which at the time was almost notorious for not allowing his music in movies.
It’s hilarious at the time that a bunch of my friends were like “why do they have modern music with a period piece?? It doesnt make sense”. And now, it’s literally required to do that (usually an acoustic version of a rock song)
Jason Schwartzman did a fake episode of MTV Cribs in character at Versailles for the DVD, and it lives rent free in my head to this day.
That sounds…legitimately funny?
This was also released when there was a proto-Gamergate backlash against Kirsten Dunst, a widespread obligation to pretend she wasn’t a good actress. All because she dared to be cast in Spider-Man and not exactly match some fans’ deeply invested spank bank images of Mary Jane Watson.She was, in fact, great in the Spider-Man movies and is a fantastic actress. So good that she made me like a Lars von Trier movie, which is the only valid reason to hate her.
It’s like she was the blueprint for the dumb Anne Hathaway backlash that happened; pick an actress who generally gives good performances and decide to hate her, just because.She was, in fact, great in the Spider-Man movies and is a fantastic actress.I recently rewatched Spider-Man 2, which I have never liked, because it’s regularly in the discussion of best superhero movies. I still found it bloated and cheesy, with excruciating comedy bits and cheap looking 2000s era WB TV show sets, but Dunst was just as good as I remembered. The final shot of the movie, with Dunst’s face plainly displaying that Mary Jane loves Peter but is conflicted about the choice she’s made? Perfect.
Dunst is good in the Spider-Mans but they really should have called her character be Gwen Stacy it fits the high school/origins timeline better anyway.
Really, gormless Maguire was the only miscast in that whole series.
I know what you are saying but I can’t even hold that against HER……In retrospect we now know what a shitbird he is, but at the time, when Melancholia was made, we didn’t know until the Premiere his disturbing views, and then came all the putrid thoughts as well as the horrid disclosures by Bjork on how she was treated by him. I have liked some of his films so it was terrible for me to find out his true nature. Am hoping Vinterberg stays neutral, I still like his stuff and hope it continues!
I’m sure that movement existed, but why in the holy hell should anyone listen to it? Bad side effect of making art.
Release a Criterion Collection blu-ray, you cowards!
I really liked this film when I saw it, for its excessive style, for its great soundtrack, and for the weird performances and tone. But I’m surprised you did not mention A Knight’s Tale, from 2001, and that film (I think, unless someone can correct me) was the first to set the precedent of ‘period piece with rock music’.
That movie was totally mediocre, but the slow transition into “Golden Years” during the ballroom scene remains one of my favorite individual film scenes ever.
Yes! The “Golden Years” sequence is so great.
I don’t know, I think A Knight’s Tale is saved by its ludicrously overqualified cast. In addition to Heath Ledger and Shannyn Sossamon (I don’t know why she wasn’t in everything in the early 00s), you had Alan Tudyk being unhinged, and Paul Bettany as Chaucer!
It’s not and the author’s insistence that Marie Antoinette somehow broke ground by bringing blatant anachronisms into films with historical settings is out right ignorant. British directors like Derek Jarman and Sally Potter had been doing historical with anachronisms for years. Jarman scored his films with Brian Eno and COIL (his Shakespeare and Marlowe adaptations stop everything so Elizabeth Welch and Annie Lennox can sing torch songs).
Julie Taymor’s “Titus” (1999) is full of this as well, right down to arcade machines in an otherwise Shakespearean-appropriate “lair”.
I think the whole “historical adaptation that plays with anachronisms” might have really gotten started with Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. Sure, that one was more straight-up modernized, but with the straight Shakespeare language and not trying to force R&J into any particular real-world place or political structure, (and since it was wildly popular) I think it opened the door on filmmakers playing around with “historical accuracy” a little more.
The anachronistic, imaginative ways of “A Knight’s Tale” and “Moulin Rouge” saved an otherwise ABYSMAL summer 2001 at the movies for me.
incredible movie and one I like to revisit often. Generation X has really shown it some love, so I’m happy it continues to inspire.
I didn’t like Sophia’s first two movies all that much but I saw them both on DVD so I thought her aesthetic may need the big screen to click with me? So when this one came out and my mate at the time expressed an interest in seeing it I agreed.It was true, I was right! Her films really do come off better on a large screen in a dark theatre. Loved it. A favorite to fall asleep to, it’s so visually and aurally spectacular. I can see it enough without my glasses on, don’t have to concentrate on the dialogue, and with no screaming or gunshots or any loud, disruptive sound effects it’s an ideal film to whisk me off to dreamland.
Sofia Coppola gets a forever pass from me because of Lost in Translation. I’ll watch whatever she directs just to try to recapture those magic moments of Bill and Scarlet in Tokyo.
Now, I honestly don’t remember if I’ve seen Marie Antoinette. If I did, I hope I’ve permanently forgotten it so that I can watch this movie like it’s the first time.
Just as I’m waiting for Kevin Smith to recapture the magic of being 22, underemployed and deconstructing Star Wars before everyone else was doing it.
Good piece & well argued. I preferred Courtney Ford as Marie Antoinette though
It’s always bittersweet watching that knowing how dirty creative did both Routh and Ford in the end, despite a sweet send-off for Ray and Nora.
Ray and Nora were great Legends though. Both would be in my all-time Legends lineup
I watched this a couple of months ago, when I had given up fighting insomnia and started clicking around HBO Max. I found it weirdly fascinating, in spite of—or maybe because of?—how slowly it moved. (The first half is Marie trying to get Louis to fuck her.) The conclusion I reached was that her life was so emotionally empty that she filled it with baubles and superficial froth, which I sort of identify with. It made sense to me that it didn’t focus on the political upheaval, because Marie herself would have had only the dimmest awareness of it, right up until she was dragged from Versailles, which is where the movie ends. When you’re married to a king that’s the 16th of his name, you probably never believe he’ll be the last.
yes, I think that’s sort of the point. Marie is very much living a caged life, but still filled with day to day complexities of being a teenage girl while existing in a court that doesn’t accept her for most of her formative years. and then outside the walls of versailles there is an entire country counting on her leadership. I think the movie paints a good picture of the absurdity of it all. Marie was sort of just a victim of timing and circumstance of the people realizing how silly the monarchy is instead of actively bad.
This is not historically true though. Despite the popular understanding of Marie Antoinette as some kind of 18th century bimbo, she was a well educated member of European aristocracy—she had an active role in the politics of the French court, and its spending. The incessant need to white wash this women into so purely innocent child is infuriating. She got what she deserved.
I read the historical book the movies based on and listened to the podcast You’re Wrong About, nobody is trying to paint her as some bimbo, she was clearly intelligent but the incessant hate on her throughout history is inherently sexist. It’s not about infantilizing her, it’s recognizing that she was not particularly more terrible than any other members of court, it’s that her femininity was weaponized against her compared to the men around her.
If you haunt any online royalty forum, what happened to Marie Antoinette is part of a spectrum of weaponized misogyny toward royal women. The vitriol spewed toward Meghan Markle (and, honestly, Kate before she came along) is insane in some of these places. And MA was far from the most notorious victim—the last Russian Tsaritsa was absolutely hated in a way her husband wasn’t. They called her Niemka (German) and just like MA, they circulated lascivious pamphlets about her, accusing of sex with various sordid characters. And look at what happened to the Princesse de Lamballe. It’s insane.
That their faults are grotesquely amplified by misogyny does not make any of those women blameless. There have always been excellent reasons to have royals, including all the ones you name.
But she *was* significantly more terrible than many members of the court. She is to this day quite known for conservative politics, even in the context of the court. Yes her femininity was weaponized against her, but she was also an individual who repeatedly put down efforts, including efforts of commoner women in Paris, to create a better world. She was not a victim of ‘timing and circumstances’, many of her policies directly lead to the events that removed her head. That is infantilizing a fucking monarch (ie one of the most powerful and educated individuals at the time). She absolutely got what she deserved.
I sincerely don’t understand liberal feminism obsession’s with elite women, many who are, like Marie Antoinette, directly in opposition to the emancipatory goals of feminism. She wasn’t a hero, she wasn’t a proto-feminism icon, she was a conservative monarch who’s policies directly harmed working women at the time.
Boring movie like all of Sofia Coppola’s movies except The Beguiled. Marie Antoinette came out at a time though when the cost of movies were cheap, there was lots of time, and film opinions were rich. Good soundtrack though.
Am I allowed to be tired of rich people making movies about rich people? Fuck them all–I’ll take a splatterpunk working class revenge flick over whatever the hell this is. Despite claims otherwise, you can’t universalize the experience of women–one of the earliest, and most important events of the French Revolution was the Women’s March of Versailles, hundreds of women being a spark for revolution, tell me about them, who gives a fuck about Marie Antoinette.
I happen to have re-watched this recently and I’ll be honest, I had forgotten what a serious film it is. It has such a strong aesthetic sense that its legacy has largely been reduced to only aesthetics, which is unfortunate.
If the actual events of history are not going to be followed, if the cultural aspects of the historical period are to be ignored in favor of anachronistic elements, if no attention is paid to historical language, or the fidelity of historical attitudes… why frame the film thorough a historical prism? Why not abandon the flummery of a tortured perspective, and make an honest movie about that which you wish to discuss?
The trouble with this movie is that it’s all style and no substance. Dunst is a good actress doing her best with what she’s been given, but the movie doesn’t really give her anything to do. In the end, it’s kind of a boring nothingburger, which is a shame since there’s meaningful story to be told here.
The film flopped because of the marketing. It should have been explicitly marketed as satire/parody, not off of the soundtrack or Coppola’s name. Think the marketing for “The Great”; playing it as farce and that we shouldn’t take it seriously. Marketing it as “Sofia Coppola Presents: Her 80s Mix Tape” doomed it to failure.