Thursday, May 25, 2006
What Makes Marie Antoinette Run?
Random Splices: No cake for Cannes critics who boo 'Marie Antoinette'
Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ premiered yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival and all reports emphasize the extreme, negative reaction to the film. Basically, many in the audience booed, earning filmmaker Sofia Coppola’s third effort a harsher reaction than the underwhelming response to ‘The Da Vinci Code.’
The film follows Antoinette’s life after her marriage to France’s King Louis XVI but ends before her beheading at the hands of angry mobs.
Kirsten Dunst, who plays Antoinette, praised Coppola at a festival press conference: “She speaks greatly to women my age.”
What Dunst may be oblivious to is the negative feelings expressed by women her age towards her own work. Young women who grew up watching Dunst’s movies, from ‘Bring It On’ to ‘Elizabethtown,’ have grown fed up with her, which is all very Antoinette.
Whether the Cannes critics attacked Coppola’s film due to their own Dunst breaking points is unclear. Considering that we’re mostly talking about middle-aged men, their points of contention probably lie elsewhere. Maybe their grief is with Jason Schwartzman’s portrayal of King Louis XVI.
