'Marie' deserves the axe

The dizzying array of colors and costumes, cakes and chandeliers and astonishingly baroque backdrops in "Marie Antoinette" could easily fill 10 issues of Vogue. One can only imagine the time and effort the pseudo-biopic's costume designer, Milena Canonero, put into such a gala display, and there are undoubtedly some who would simply die for a hairdresser like Antoinette's. Unfortunately for the rest of us, director Sofia Coppola's attempt to bring relevance to a tired setting does little to hold us in our seats.

The film follows the infamous French queen (played with indulgent glee by Kirsten Dunst) from her arrival at the pleasure palace Versailles in 1768 until her forcible removal by revolutionaries in 1789. Her marriage with the Dauphin and future King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) is arranged and loveless. Louis is somehow more interested in hunting and locksmithing than his wife's absurdly fine figure, forcing Antoinette to seek fulfillment elsewhere. So Antoinette transforms the French court from refined elegance to ebullient excessiveness, throwing extravagant parties, commissioning outrageous getups and engaging overall in the most epicurean of lifestyles.

But it's not easy being queen, or so Coppola would have us believe. Antoinette is relentlessly pressured by her mother back in Austria to bear a male heir to the throne, and the gossipmongers at the court are a constant threat. Soon enough, Louis XV (a loutish Rip Torn) passes into oblivion and Antoinette — after being crowned queen — is supposed to start worrying about important matters of state.

Instead, Antoinette lets her husband Louis do all the royal blundering. She is content to prance around on her faux-farm and engage in the odd extramarital affair. Antoinette seems neither to know nor to care about the world outside Versailles — and why should she? After all, it is the only world she has ever known. When she hears of the Parisian mob's disgust at her overindulgence, Antoinette is more confused than concerned, and it never occurs to her that there might be some substance to their jeers.

In this way, Coppola tries to craft an apologia of sorts for the world-renowned excesses of Marie Antoinette. Antoinette, the thesis goes, was a product of her environment; she did what one would expect a normal person to do in her circumstances, as part of a long tradition of royals trapped under the heavy weight of their crowns.

Yet Coppola is not very interested in French culture as such. There are only a handful of scenes outside Versailles, and even those only depict the world of the nobles. She seems to have forgotten that what makes Marie Antoinette such an interesting historical figure is not her clothing, her parties or anything about her court in general. Rather, she is remembered specifically because of the revolution that Coppola all but ignores. Without this context, the film sinks beneath its own self-indulgence.

Perhaps "Marie Antoinette" is so absurdly sympathetic to insulated royalty because Coppola herself is heir to the Hollywood throne. Daughter to legendary director Francis Ford Coppola — whose production company, American Zoetrope, helped finance the film — Sofia grew up in the one situation in the world most similar to Antoinette's Versailles. No stranger to fashion and fame, Coppola cannot see that insulated world of celebrity culture — with tabloids standing in for the court gossipmongers of yore — with a critical eye, since she is still very much living in it.

The points of intersection between now and then in "Marie Antoinette" serve to distinguish it from most period pieces, though not necessarily in a good way. Some anachronisms work startlingly well, as at a Parisian masked ball in the middle of the film where we see nobles dancing at a lively pace, presumably to orchestral music. However, what we hear is something very different — the lively pop song "Hong Kong Garden" by Siouxsie and the Banshees. The rhythm of the soundtrack and the movement of the dancers is, almost eerily, perfectly in synch. It is then, more than ever, that the film begins to rise towards relevance and we can imagine little difference between the 17th-century nobility and that of the 21st.

A few other scenes work to drive the analogy home. A carriage ride early on almost seems like a long car trip, and fashion montages bear startling resemblance to scenes in "The Devil Wears Prada." But mostly, the film follows Dunst's irrelevant traipsing about the palace with her entourage. The scenery all begins to blend together, the story does not progress significantly and ultimately we — unlike Coppola — cannot relate to or fully understand the profligate lifestyle of Marie Antoinette.

Dunst's Antoinette more resembles Paris Hilton than anyone else — born with silver spoon in mouth, famous for being famous and a consummate party girl who just wants to have fun. Some might say that "Marie Antoinette" is a profoundly feminist film, and indeed Coppola is one of the tragically few A-list female Hollywood directors. That doesn't make "Marie Antoinette" an entertaining movie, however. The statement about celebrity culture Coppola tries to convey via "Marie Antoinette" is likely to be of interest to no one but celebrities themselves. Pros: Lush costumes and sets; Dunst is hot. Cons: Self-indulgent; difficult to relate to.