“Given the times we live in, Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette (Columbia, 10.20) could well become a box-office hit,” wrote Sean O’Hagan in last Sunday’s Guardian. “While not quite as shallow as Liberation critic Agnes Poirier paints it (‘history is merely decor and Versailles a boutique hotel for the jet set, past and present’) nor as visionary as Lady Antonia Fraser insists, it is an oddly empty film.
“Having moved away from the cool contemporaneity of her previous mood piece, the lauded Lost in Translation , Coppola seems adrift in the ancien regime. The result is a historical drama for the Wallpaper generation, all sumptuous interiors, dresses to die for, and an oh-so-ironic ’80s glam-pop soundtrack. As Bow Wow Wow’s trash classic ‘ Want Candy’ blares out its blatant message of self-gratification over yet another baroque party scene, you wonder what happened to Coppola’s signature style, the hazy, impressionistic, understated languor of her two previous outings.”