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koberulz.bsky.social · @koberulz.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Marie Antoinette 3/10

I recall there being quite a bit of discourse around a recent Sofia Coppola movie in which people took issue with the way she was trying to portray the lives and concerns of “normal” people in a way that made it abundantly clear she had no concept of the amount of privilege she'd grown up with. This feels like it has very much the same problem, where it sympathises not just with the eponymous woman (Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia)—which on its own would be understandable given her status as essentially a toy to be played with by the leaders of two different countries—but indeed the French aristocracy as a whole. There's little sense given of the uprisings, or their effects, or even that anyone is aware of them. It's all just “well isn't this frivolity rather lovely?” for two hours, and then some people get beheaded out of nowhere. It never acknowledges any sort of ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the situation outside the castle walls, much less any malice. Quite why things are how they are is never addressed. It's effective when they're all just making Marie miserable—there's a particularly memorable scene where she's trying to get dressed, but the most senior person in the room has to be the one to dress her, and people keep entering so she just has to stand there naked while they play pass-the-parcel with her clothes—but it fails to extend that feel to the rest of the film. It argues neither that she was complicit nor that her sympathies with the citizenry were ignored. It argues neither that she was uncaring nor that she was kept in the dark. It argues, essentially, nothing.

#movie

Published 2026-06-30 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere