"Marie Antoinette" Film Review




A small group of people is leaving the Tuileries Palace in the center of Paris, to a journey that never meets its destination. The year is 1792 and the site is France going through its most turbulent historical moment, the end of its monarchy. This historical setting was the inspiration for Antonia Fraser’s narration of Marie Antoinette’s biography portraying skillfully a plot of betrayal, religion, and sex. 

Widely acclaimed for her historical works, Antonia Fraser was awarded the Franco-British Literary Prize in 2001 for her book, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, one of her 5 books that focus on women and their important roles in history. 


The book was made into a film by the talented movie maker Sofia Coppola who depicted with perfection each detail of the lavish feasts carried out in the sumptuousness of the Versailles Castle, their official dwelling, as well as the prolonged and elaborated rituals of rising, dressing and eating in public that made up the routine of Marie Antoinette and her husband, the king Louis XVI. 


The film reveals an underprepared noblewoman who had been made a pawn in an intricate political moment, a piece on her mother’s chessboard’ whose authorship, of the famous phrase ‘Let them eat cake’ was unfairly accredited to.


The soundtrack comprises two discs that perfectly blend classical songs with guitar-based rock, electronic, indie rock, new wave, and post-punk bands, making the 1980s the bulk of it all. This mixture of different musical styles of different historical moments that compose the background of this riveting production brings such a contemporaneity to this masterpiece that drives our imagination to what it would be like if an underprepared leader ruled over a powerful modern nation.


Circe Aguiar

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