Marie Antoinette (or, Mai Oui!)

I don't think anyone was expecting substance out of Sofia Coppola's latest flick but they were sure as hell holding out for a cavalcade of style. And she delivers.

Marie Antoinette looks and sounds a treat. Just don't touch it because it will fall apart.

There seems to be a push in many films nowadays (and I am directly referencing The Queen and Catch A Fire here) to take non-bias to the absolute extreme. Marie Antoinette is just another example of a film maker trying to be so unbiased that she ends up castrating the film, leaving it voiceless and unimportant. Films need to have a voice so that the audience can agree or disagree. They need to say something or the gut never comes into play and everything begins to feel a little effete.

Grumbling aside, the film is extremely watchable. It is a worthy attempt to make one of histories most reviled figures a little more palatable. Coppola's Marie Antoinette is portrayed as a little girl who is understandably drawn into the decadence of the court at Versailles when her husband is unresponsive. It is a convenient take on the content and the new wave soundtrack helps to highlight the modern interpretation. Yet it is obvious that re-interpreting the French court through modern morays is a artistic conceit rather than founded in any historical fact.

Check it out. It is a bit of fluff masquerading as substance but it is alluring fluff.