Review: Marie Antoinette

UK Release: 20th October 2006

Director Sofia Coppola’s modernist take on the life of the infamous 18th-century monarch who said “let them eat cake” plays like an extended 1980s pop video.

Although based on Antonia Fraser’s respected biography, hard fact gives way to a stylised portrait of the naive 14-year-old Austrian princess (a coquettish Kirsten Dunst) as she heads to Versailles to marry the shy Dauphin (a blank Jason Schwartzman). The seven years it took before the consummation of her marriage meant navigating ruthless court protocol, manners and diplomacy, and it’s the pressures of privilege that interest Coppola more than any revolutionary incident.

Historical authenticity is undercut further by bursts of anachronistic pop music (including a masked rave to Siouxsie and the Banshees’s Hong Kong Garden). The film is ravishing to look at, thanks to the production team’s unprecedented access to Versailles, but its frothy charm eventually wears thin.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 122mins

Review by Alan Jones

News: Jason Schwartzman

Whether appearing as decadent King Louis XVI in his cousin Sophia Coppolla’s latest movie will boost his career is hard to tell. He is, however, in talks to appear in the Wes Anderson-directed feature-length take on Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox, due out sometime next year.

This would mark a welcome re-teaming of the actor and director following their successful partnership on Anderson’s breakout 1998 flick Rushmore. Whether other Anderson favourites Bill Murray and Owen Wilson will also appear is unclear, but The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tennenbaums co-star Angelica Houston is also in talks.

News: Kirsten Dunst

From playing Marie Antoinette, the most famous Queen Consort in history, in a second team-up with director Sophia Coppolla following their work together on 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, Dunst has decided to take a break from filmmaking after appearing in more than 30 movies in just 15 years.  The 24-year-old is set to head off to study art – though few other details are known.

We can still expect to see her on our screens again, however, with her return as Mary-Jane Watson in Spider-Man 3, due to hit our screens early in May next year. Whether she will appear in any subsequent sequels remains unclear, as does the status of the as-yet untitled project in which she was set to star about Marla Ruzicka, a relief worker who advocated for Iraqis and Afghanis in the wake of the recent US-led invasions who was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad last year at the age of 28.

News: Steve Coogan

The comedian still best known as Alan Partridge continues to find interesting film roles. Following his experimental turn in director Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story earlier this year and his supporting role in this week’s Marie Antoinette, Coogan has signed on to play the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, in a Winterbottom-directed adaptation of his memoirs, Murder in Samarkand. Detailing Murray’s efforts to expose alleged British involvement in the torture of terror suspects and other human rights abuses, it will be an interesting departure for the comic.

Also in the pipeline for Coogan is a feature-length movie based around his Alan Partridge character, Alan Partridge: The Movie, although the production is currently on hold. Meanwhile, he will be appearing in the Ben Stiller vehicle Night at the Museum alongside the likes of Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Mickey Rooney, Dick Van Dyke and Ricky Gervais – due to hit our screens on Boxing Day.

Coogan will also appear in a cameo role in Hot Fuzz – the British police comedy from the team behind cult favourite Shawn of the Dead – and is currently attached in the Roger Moore role alongside Ben Stiller in a movie version of 60s TV classic The Persuaders.