Marie-Antoinette Review

For most of us, the extent of our knowledge when it comes to Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France is that she advised the starving masses to "eat cake" and then lost her head to Madame Guillotine during the la Revolution. Does director Sophia Coppola's dreamy biopic shed any more light on the woman behind the name? Perhaps, but only a little.

Kirsten Dunst stars as Marie as we follow her from her teenage marriage to French Prince Louis (Jason Schwartzmann), through her days as Queen until her final journey from Versailles. Marie was just 37 when she was executed at Place de la Revolution and during her years as Queen she had garnered a reputation as being shallow and decadent but Coppola's portrayal is much more sympathetic. She instead shows Marie as a lonely and rather lost woman, unprepared for the rigidity of life and lack of privacy at the French court after her much more relaxed childhood in Austria. She also suffers at the hands of the gossips and those jealous of her position - the infamous "Let then eat cake" remark published in the press is dismissed here as a outright lie. Obviously we see Marie enjoying the finer things in life and indulging herself but these are seen as youthful exuberance rather than overt opulence.

Dunst is surprisingly good in the lead, displaying a gentle touch we haven't seen since she last collaborated with Coppola on "The Virgin Suicides" while Coppola herself has created a lavish recreation of 18th century France - it's easy to understand how someone can get caught up in extravagance when you see how the aristocracy lived!