Oscar Martin, May 2019
Sophia Coppola’s 2006 Marie Antoinette is less of a period piece than meets the eye. While it strives to be visually accurate, Coppola’s humour and fast pacing characterise the present far more than they do the later decades of the 18th Century. The film is very modern in its depiction of the titular character’s lifestyle, encouraging the audience to be swept away in the sheer ecstasy of excessive consumption – its favourable representation of the French royalty is especially unusual. While Marie Antoinette goes to great lengths to engage the past, it tends to avoid actual history.
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