Jornal da Mostra

A brave Sofia Coppola in a controversial and pop “Marie Antoinette”
“Marie Antoinette”, by Sofia Coppola
Nº 422 > 29ª Mostra > 20/06/2006



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Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff

A brave Sofia Coppola in a controversial and pop “Marie Antoinette”

Documento sem título Sofia Coppola emerged from the almost unanimous success of “Lost in Translation” into a controversial, courageous adaptation of the much talked-about book by author Lady Antonia Fraser. Any expectation there might have been as regards “Marie Antoinette”, in competition at the 59th Cannes Film Festival, was all annihilated by the booing at the end of the first showing of the film in the press screening, last May. But this only wetted international curiosity about the pop-royal film with a bent more towards “Amadeus” by Czech film maker Milos Forman, than towards “Danton” by Polish director Andrzej Wajda.

The film is dazzling in portraying the luxury of French royalty and is replete with new wave/neo-romantic music by bands such as New Order and Bow Wow Wow, a band in the eighties put together by the Sex Pistols. Pop music, daring choreography, and exuberant visual appeal in the costumes show Marie Antoinette in the likes of a teenage clubber all dressed up for an untimely party. In the wake of the film with a focus on young audiences, the French publishing market took the opportunity to break more taboos about the French Revolution that, for over two hundred years, has been viewed with a prevalence of closed, monolithic opinions on class struggle.

Sofia Coppola does not go as far as to suggest historical revisionism. She only shows the history of French royalty in what it was at its most beautiful and futile. In the wake of the film, however, the bold campaign to release the book by Antonia Fraser by Flammarion publishers, is frankly monarchistic. The campaign for the book compares Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) to a Lady Di in the past. The book presents this noble character as a victim of misunderstanding and rumours, a fallen angel, a scapegoat for absurd politics. In the film, her greatest problem seems to revolve around the scant sexual appetites of her royal consort, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzmann).

Following the example of the monarchist author, Coppola also views the person of Marie Antoinette with sympathy, famous as she was for, supposedly, having suggested that the people eat brioches in the absence of bread. The film is dazzling only for the beauty of the court and its culture bathed in gold. The people, the plebeians as described by actual history, are rarely seen on film. But the last scene is emblematic - a static image of the consequences of the invasion of the royal palace at Versailles, with one of the gorgeous salons sacked and destroyed.

The rich historical venture was wholly supported by the French government, where Coppola`s U.S. production was permitted unrestricted and hitherto unheard of access to the restored preserved interiors of the palace of Versailles. Young Austrian Marie Antoinette lived there from the year of her marriage in 1770 until 1789, the year of the French revolution that abolished the monarchy and brought about the ascent of two new social classes - bourgeois and lower bourgeois. Another view of Marie Antoinette, by celebrated Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig, of 1933, was rejected by Coppola as being over-hostile towards Antoinette`s real person. The history of the French Revolution is indeed most complex. And this will most certainly not be the last film made on the subject.

Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity ( clarecharity@uol.com.br )

For further information:
www.festival-cannes.org




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