At this point one must stress this is a fictional account.
Yet Marie Antoinette herself has fallen in love with the beautiful Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen) – an attachment that has scandalised the court. The Queen is aware of Sidonie’s feelings, and treats her in a teasing, affectionate manner. Holding herself aloof from the promiscuities of Versailles the youthful Sidonie is completely devoted to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), whose allure she feels as a blend of the maternal and the erotic. Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) has the task of choosing books from the library and reading them to the Queen. Although the story is based on a novel of the same name by Chantal Thomas, Jacquot creates a realistic portrait of the carefully structured life of the court crumbling into disarray in the crisis that follows the fall of the Bastille. French director, Benoit Jacquot, shows how it should be done, in Farewell My Queen, a costume drama set during the last days of the ancien régime.
Recently we saw Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s aimless, shapeless Marie Antoinette of 2006.Ĭoppola’s film almost did for the Court of Versailles what Jaws did for the beach, with Dunst playing Marie Antoinette as a bored Valley Girl.
Van Dyke II – otherwise known as “One-Take Woody”, with the uncredited assistance of Julien Duvivier. The Queen’s personality was established in filmmakers’ minds by Stefan Zweig’s best-selling biography of 1932, subtitled The Portrait of an Average Woman, and she has never been allowed to deviate too far from that model.Īmong earlier portrayals of Marie Antoinette there was Norma Shearer in a Hollywood film of 1938, directed by W.S. Everyone knows the story of doomed, frivolous Marie Antoinette whose life of pampered luxury was ended by the guillotine.
0 kommentar(er)
