Marie Antoinette
Do yourself a favour: don't bother going to see Marie Antoinette. If you must go, take your iPod and listen to some music. That way you can ignore the slacker accents, the unconvincing acting, the knowing ironic lines - oh, and the sound of clunky metaphors thudding to the floor and the music soundtrack telling you what the characters are feeling. It looks pretty sumptuous, though: beautifully sunlit forests, fine buildings, lovely frocks, grand ceilings, and wonderful staircases. Sumptuous but vacuous. And so dull and unconvincing: the film seems to spend so much time being ironic that it forces you not to care about any of it, or any of the characters. I struggle to see the point of telling a story about dim people living empty, protocol-constrained and vacuously hedonistic lives unless you're going to make us sympathise with them in some way - but this film is so lacking in any psychological realism or depth that you really can't care at all. I was already looking at my watch after 45 minutes.
Low points: "Fools rush in" on the soundtrack to indicate that she's smitten with a Swedish soldier; a fountain spurting to suggest Louis' new-found sexual potency; a feather clinging to a grass stem in the breeze while the queen's child gambols bucolically - presumably drawing our attention to the transient nature of this idyll. You start wondering whether all of this is ironic, or whether Coppola really means it. It's not often that a film actively irritates me, but this one did. It's so pleased with itself that it seems to forget about the importance of engaging the audience. Grrr.
