I regret reporting that Marie Kreutzer‘s Corsage, which screened at 11 am this morning, didn’t sit well. I found it flat, boring, listless. The Austrian empress Elizabeth (Vicky Krieps) is bored with her royal life, and the director spares no effort in persuading the audience to feel the same way.
Krieps plays up the indifference, irreverence and existential ennui. Somewhere during Act Two a royal physician recommends heroin as a remedy for her spiritual troubles, and of course she develops a habit. I was immediately thinking what a pleasure it would be to snort horse along with her, or at least during the screening.
Corsage is unfortunately akin to Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette — stories of women of title and privilege who feel alienated and unhappy and at a general loss. I’m sorry but this movie suffocates the soul. In actuality Empress Elizabeth was assassinated at in 1898, at age 51. For some reason Kreutzer has chosen to end the life of Krieps’ Elizabeth at a younger point in her life, and due to a different misfortune.
This is one of the most deflating and depressing films I’ve ever seen.
