The film Marie-Antoinette

I went to see the film Marie-Antoinette at the weekend. Directed by Sofia Coppola, it starred Kirsten Dunst as the ill-fated young queen. Rather than being a sequential biography (which could have been a bit boring given the Thomas Paine “rights of man” moralising which usually accompanies any examination of this period), the film was comprised of a series of set-pieces that cleverly resembled the theatrical tableaus of the 18th century.

The symbolism of the film had several ironic layers of meaning so that you could read the story in different ways. For instance the Queen of France seemed to be constantly eating elaborate cakes. Versailles in the early morning light had a haunted quality that paralleled the later (20th century) sightings of a ghostly Marie-Antoinette returning to the scenes of her former excesses. The anachronistic soundtrack suggested that the entire movie was inspired by the career of the Princess of Wales in the late 1980s. It was a complex film that covered many issues and could be read through several interpretations. Not obviously commercial, but the sort of film that will acquire a considerable following through a “long tail”.

I went to see the film with Helen B and Kim Blacha. When we emerged from the cinema they seemed to be in a state of shock. “The clothes” they gasped to each other, “did you see the clothes!”