Rather than crap in the other thread on the film, I figured I’d do the polite thing and start my own. I certainly wasn’t awed by this film, even though I thought that the acting was fine, and the sets were lovely.
I’m not going to really spoiler the film, except for one part near the ending, and I’ll box it. It didn’t suck, but I couldn’t help but think that this film could have been so much better (even without added tits). In the beginning of the film, you kind of get the sense that Marie is just a hapless pawn in the grand scheme of aligning national dynasties with one another, but they just let that whole plot line peter out fairly quickly. You never really get much sense of why anyone in the film does much of anything. Louis hunts, Marie (at least occassionally) spends money, and that’s pretty much it.
Kirsten Dundst is freakin’ hot, but whomever did her costumes for this film should be shot. One thing I absolutely lurve about 18th Century clothing is that women’s boobies just pop right out of their outfits. However, just about everything Dundst wears mashes down her great rack (as anyone who’s seen her bed jumping sequence in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind knows, it’s fantastically proportioned), though there is some glimpse of nipple early on in the film when she’s climbing out of the bath.
It’s never clearly explained if Louis is gay, or just stupid, but for some reason, he can rarely be bothered to have sex with her. There’s rumors that he’s gay, but we never see anything conclusive. Nor do we get any idea of what the hell he does as king, other than hunt. (A glaring error in the film is that when his father contracts smallpox, there’s no physical symptoms of it.) There’s two scenes with him discussing finances, and agrees to fund the American Revolution, but that’s it (nor do any American figures show up in the film, which is kind of odd, given that Ben Franklin was immensely popular in France). You get no idea of what makes any of these characters tick, in short.
For reasons I don’t understand, instead of using period music, the film relies on modern music, and the selection is just horrible. Not that the songs are bad, but there’s a number of songs which they could have used which would have worked much, much better than the ones they chose. A couple of examples, Marie is “shopping” (though she doesn’t go out, the wares are brought to her) you hear I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow. Two much better choices would have been to use Material Girl by Madonna or Lust for Life by Iggy Pop. Both of those tracks would have fit the scene better (BTW, it’s in these scenes that you get a couple of shots of pairs of Doc Martens laying about, certainly not accidental). Then there’s a massive birthday party for Marie. There’s a lighthearted scene where Marie and others at the party dance outside, down a hill, and end up beside a reflecting pool to watch the sun rise. The music that’s playing is Ceremony by New Order. When I saw them start to dance outside, I started singing, “We can dance if you want to, we can leave this world behind.” You know, Safety Dance by Men Without Hats. The scene freakin’ screams for that song.
One thing that I’m wondering about is that Marie is shown having 3 kids, and yet, I’ve only read about one in the history books. What about the others? Were they real? If so, what happened to them?
I have a few problems with the ending, but I’ll box them.
You never really get a sense of what’s going on outside of the palace, so when the peasants rise in revolt, it’s just sort of, “Uh, why?” Later, when the peasants are outside the palace, torches and pitchforks in hand, Marie goes out on the balcony to look at them. They’re screaming for her death, and none of them has anything to throw at her. (I couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t throw her jewels at them, since that would have set the crowd at each others throats and probably insured the royals safety.) Marie stretches her arms out, lays them on the balcony railing, and bows to the crowd so that her forehead almost touches the railing. This, IMHO, is where the film should have ended. Do a fade to black, with the noise of the crowd still thundering in your ears, then the sound of a guillotine blade coming down, followed by silence. Instead, we get a scene of the royals fleeing in a coach, then we cut to a scene of the royal bedroom after it’s been trashed, with the sound of a bird fluttering about.My advice is to wait for this one on video.
