Who would want to be an aristocrat?! A nearly cult film if only the much hyped anachronistic music had been more in evidence. Coppola should have dared more: loved early scenes with Austrian Marie in her carriage trundling across forests to get to France..all disorientation and youthful expectation…but everythime I started to hear the suggestive tones of another long lost punk hit it faded away and it was back to more shots of pink parties and satin shoes….and did feel the film’s main point that Marie partied as a form of displacement for her unconsummated marriage would have been better realised if Marie had been given more interior life.to play with…so to speak. The juxtaposition of punk and sexual longing could have been a real contender for cultdom, instead it remained a hint rather than a slap across the face..
But Kirsten Dunst still managed to suggest frustration and intelligence through her porous eyes and thus build up a new myth perhaps of Antoinette’s compassion?
Just glad we never got to the guillotine.