When the French Peasants stormed the Bastille in Paris
on July 14th 1789, their Queen Marie-Antoinette was holding Court elsewhere in the country at the Palace
in Versailles. This rather resplendent and engaging costume drama follows the
doomed Dauphine’s next three days fuelled by courtier's gossip as all their
lives start to fall apart.
The story is told through the eyes of a young woman Sidonie
Laborde who as the Queen’s Reader keeps her Monarch entertained by reading from
novels, plays and even fashion magazines as she lazes in bed seemingly without
a care in the world. Sidonie is not totally
subservient to the Queen whom she adores, but she is more than a tad infatuated
with her too.
As the troubles escalate and the news and intrigue keeps
seeping into the back corridors Sidonie resourcefully pumps her own network for
information from the Palace Archives Keeper and the Wardrobe Mistress so that she
is kept abreast with what all the nobility knows. Unlike the Queen, Sidonie has started to
panic and demands ‘what is going to happen to us?’ when the Revolutionaries
eventually reach the Palace.
Despite the Queen’s entreaties the King has decided
that the Royal Family will not run away to Austria or Switzerland for their own safety
but Marie Antoinette insists that her lover at least does. Who knew that ‘he’ is actually a she, The
Comtesse de Polignac in fact, and that the Queen
is a lesbian? Either that one slipped by
me at school, or the prudish Brits had that erased that out of our Text Books
on the Revolution. Sidonie who is
convinced that the Queen actually adores her, is then asked, no ordered, to
risk her own neck to save that of the Comtesse.
Shot mainly in Versailles itself, which with the sumptuous
costumes makes for a glorious visual treat, but the real sheer joy of this
movie is watching the spoilt indulgent Queen behaving so recklessly and extravagantly
when her days will soon be up. The
beautiful Austrian actress Diane Kruger ('Inglorious Bastards') is very inch the
most regal screen Queen for years, and writer/director Benoit Jacquot has
surrounded her with such a splendid suppocast.
Ex model and now serious actress, Lea Seydoux ('Inglorious Bastards', 'Midnight In Paris') is perfect as Sidonie, and the alluring Virginie Ledoyen ('8
Women') plays the Queen’s sexy lover. There
are a few scene stealers too like Noeme Lvovsky ('House of Tolerance') who as
Madame Campan the Queen’s Lady in Waiting who just gives one of her fierce stern
glares to put Sidonie and anyone else back in their place.
How much was fact and how much was fiction about this
momentous period in French history simply doesn't get in the way of making this one
rather fabulous movie. The pace is fast,
the pomp rather magnificent and the drama extremely enthralling. And if your time is up, then I cannot think
of a better way to go than in the style of this Marie Antoinette.
Unmissable.
P.S. There is no way this Marie Antoinette would have
ever said ‘let them eat cake’ …. It would have more likely been ‘let them
embroider me another flower for my finery book’.
P.P.S. Movie triva. At the same movie theater (the fab Landmark in Cambridge Mass) where I saw this, the were also showing 'The Queen Of Versailles' the most wonderfully horrendous faux queen trying to build the most hideous faux palace in Florida. LOVED the film though.
★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★
