by Jessica Schneider

Created on: July 11, 2009   Last Updated: July 13, 2009

Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is a really bad film. What irritates me though, is that this film, directed by a person who has only gotten where she is on account of her lineage, now has convinced me that she really has no talent as a filmmaker. Although I'm one of the few who appreciated and defended her film Lost in Translation as being something that showed 'potential', despite her winning the Oscar for its ridiculous screenwriting.

But now her third film is just so bad, so shallow, so pointless, there really isn't much to say about it. The costumes and scenery, while nice to look at are not used to their advantage. Nowhere in the film is there a memorable camera angle that evokes breadth or the clues that we are watching someone with real TALENT. The screenplay as well, could be argued as worse, for there are probably only about ten or so pages worth of shallow dialogue throughout the film.

Here is the sped up version of the film: Kirsten Dunst is sent to France to marry Louis XVI, played by Jason Schwartzman. They marry right away, he refuses to have sex with her, Marie is bored and lonely, and so she begins to enjoy the riches of her wealth, which apparently include eating lots of cakes and pastries (all the while never gaining an ounce on the skinny Dunst), lots of costumes and shoes, and parties well into the night.

Then when Louis XV dies of smallpox, Schwartzman becomes king and Dunst queen, they party it up, they have two kids (who are both blonde despite Schwartzman's dark features) and they never age throughout the film. Then it is revealed that Marie has been gambling away too much of France's money, people show up at the palace with torches and complaining how they have no bread to eat, where Dunst then speaks the famed quip, "Well, let them eat cake." Blah Blah Blah till two hours later, where we see the two of them being taken away and then it ends.

In real life, both Louis and Marie were executed for treason, but none of this is addressed in the film. Also, it's a cross between trying to make it a pseudo historical epic with that of a MTV rock video. In this so-called 'period piece' you will find 1980s 'New Wave' classics by The Cure, New Order and Bow Wow Wow: a terrible arrangement of sound for this absurdly shallow film.

This is not to confuse it with the great 1996 remake of Romeo + Juliet, where 90s songs are used for a more 'updated feel'. The difference there, however, is that the director Baz Luhrmann is treating the entire

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