One of the defining characteristics in a Sofia Coppola movie is the
main character glancing out a window. In her Marie Antoinette film,
Coppola has Antoinette peer out windows in several shots. Antoinette can be
seen with her head against the window during a carriage ride early in the film,
after asking to be excused from an event with her husband. She stares out a window
in one of the film’s final scenes while leaving Versailles. Louis XVI,
Antoinette’s husband, and Antoinette left Versailles in France just before a
mob destroyed the palace. Louis XVI asked Antionette if she was admiring the
view when staring out the window, but she remarked she was saying goodbye. The
film stressed the importance of Antionette conceiving a child so an heir to the
throne would exist. Antionette received substantial criticism from Louis XVI’s
clan in belief she was the reason for the unconsummated marriage. She made an
effort, a forced effort, to love the king and seduce him. The king could only
think about how tiring his swimming and hunting excursions made him. Joseph II,
Antionette’s brother, talked to Louis XVI about romance in terms of key-making
and the king and Antionette ended up with a daughter (and then a son and
another daughter). Even after pleasing French royalty by producing an heir,
Antionette is still limited in her freedoms as royalty. She could not have
anything foreign from Austria when she became engrained with France and could
not feed her own baby due to protocol. Antionette established a party and
gambling reputation while holding an affair with Count Fersen of the Swedish
Army.
In Marie Antoinette: Fashion, Third Wave Feminism, and Chick
Culture by Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young, the authors discuss the meaning
of chick culture. The phenomenon refers to American and British media forms
arising in the 1990’s centered around twenty-to thirty year old college-educated
women. Chick culture attempts to explore the intersection of third wave feminism,
consumerism, and popular culture (Ferris and Young 98). The third-wave revision
requires the audience to see events from Antoinette’s perspective, as a fourteen-year
old archduchess separated from family and forced to live with strangers in a
foreign court (Ferris and Young 99). Coppola utilized letters written between
Antoinette and her mother to establish audience identification with the main
character. The director claimed Antoinette was a “lost girl, leaving childhood
behind,” who would grasp “the final dignity of a woman” (Ferris and Young 100).
Antoinette could be portrayed as a “real girl… who tried to find her own way” (Ferris
and Young 100). The film’s opening is wordless, with uses of pop music and an
observable teen queen. Viewers are invited into Antoinette’s space when she is
shown eating cake and looking squarely into the camera. Antoinette proceeds to
wake up from her bed in the next scene, with her hair messy and her face “peaceful
(Ferris and Young 101). She plays with her dog, Mops, in her bed, and Coppola portrays
this scene to be in a time period no different than the current one. Coppola’s
message stepped aside from history and related to Antoinette being an “ordinary
girl caught up in extraordinary circumstances” (Ferris and Young 101). Pop
music was non-diegetic and diegetic, as the characters hear in a scene at the
masked ball. All accounts of Antoinette, and third-wave feminism, address the
convergence of fashion and identity. Coppola illustrates Antoinette’s changing of
outfits at the French border, no longer a part of the Austrian court. Antoinette
is rebranded and stripped of any belongings reminiscent of Austrian culture. She
arrived in a white gown, a blank canvas. Through costume design, Antoinette was
forced to participate in the luxurious gowns of Versailles fashion (Ferris and
Young 102). She is supposed to be the person with power, but Coppola pronounces
Antoinette was a victim. The Queen was forced to strip naked several times and
questioned protocols when the honor to dress her changed several times in the
span of a few seconds. She overcame submission with respect to fashion, as she
was able to define herself through attire chosen by her. Coppola emphasized the
dress as an expression and definition of self, even “stylizing” the costumes
instead of vying for the “expected classical look” (Ferris and Young 104).
Colorful sets, elegant food displays, and the Versailles palace added to a
gratifying appeal. Pop music mixed with the eighteenth century, and the color
pink, signature of post-feminism, was presented profusely. Pink hats, ribbons,
shoes, and desserts exemplified the meaning of pink to third-wave feminism. Antoinette
appears in over 60 gowns, first submitting to French culture and then rebelling
to define her own fashion style as Queen of France (Ferris and Young 105).
Fashion also linked to sexuality, as the pressure of Antoinette to produce an heir
and have a consummate marriage was perverse. Coppola portrayed Antoinette upset
about the sexual desire of Louis XVI. She incorporates a scene from chick
culture with Antoinette and her friends trying on loads of shoes and jewelry, drinking
champagne, and eating a pink-and-white treat. The song throughout the scene, “I
Want Candy,” reinforces Antoinette’s child-like innocence (Ferris and Young 106).
Coppola utilized a few different camera angles, including long
shots to show the French landscape. While Antoinette is greeting dignitaries
arranged in two lines around her, the camera performs a point-of-view shot. A
viewer sees the dignitaries’ faces and expressions from Antoinette’s
perspective. Some scenes showed Antoinette and had voiceovers from people
talking poorly about Antoinette who were not in the scene. Coppola sets aside
historical accuracy, as the Queen would not be able to remove herself out of
the constant companionship by flatterers, to probe at our sympathy (Ferris and
Young 108). Antoinette was an outsider in her own reign.
Coppola included a key component of film third-wave audiences
expect: romance. She invested heartily in portraying the intimacy between Antoinette
and Count Fersen. The masquerade ball scene, the bedroom play, and countryside
escapes all converge in “chick-flick tradition” ((Ferris and Young 109). The director
allowed Antoinette to live, stopping short of Antoinette’s death by the
guillotine. Antoinette’s costumes appear devoid of color in the final scenes,
signifying an end to the pleasurable and indulgent lifestyle. Her main
objective is protection of her family, as she maintained multiple times she
should stay with her husband. The act depicting Antoinette bowing to the crowd
is an act of mercy, and Coppola engaged the audience in thinking the death of
her and her husband could have been an unjust act. Antoinette remained alive in
the film and could be seen as a third-wave heroine ((Ferris and Young 110). A
movie review by L.V. Jeffrey highlighted the importance in Coppola’s preference
for style: “Coppola continues to fascinate by giving professional creative voice
to all the girly-girls in the world, ever arguing that they’re a major subset
of society.” The society is one we “would be foolish to offhandedly dismiss” (Ferris
and Young 111).
An article entitled Off With Hollywood’s Head: Sofia Coppola as
a Feminine Auteur, by Todd Kennedy, traces Coppola’s style through her different
movies. The gaze, discussed with Rear Window, is used by Coppola. In The
Virgin Suicides, the viewer is tempted to lust over the Lisbon sisters. In Marie
Antoinette, the viewer may lust over pastries or shoes (Kennedy 41). The spectator
becomes aware of the gaze by participating as a voyeur into the events happening
on screen. In Marie Antoinette, Coppola grants power to Antoinette when
she retorts into the camera “What are you looking at?” after Antoinette is seen
lounging on a chair in a seductive manner. The audience became aware of the gaze
as Coppola challenges woman as the object of a spectacle (Kennedy 48). Every aspect of Antoinette’s life appears on display,
including being surrounded while eating and visitors intruding on her privacy. Crowds
are present for her wedding night and birth of a child, and crowds judged her
in the opera house. Antoinette became somewhat empowered through consumerism,
by buying and/or wearing new clothes. The wearing of new clothes does not only
signal femininity but allows for multiple forms of feminine identity. A powdered
wig and taffeta allow Antoinette to become French dauphine. Coppola’s protagonists
all struggle with feminine agency, leading to consumption and leisure (Kennedy,
41). The director takes the quest for
identity (mostly a masculine concept according to Kennedy) and creates a feminine
perspective, questioning the methodology resulting in women always having to
consume (Kennedy, 41).
In Lick the Stars, Coppola relied heavily on the perspective
of a young female named Kate. Kate, like Antoinette, was lost in foreign surroundings
while attempting to determine her identity. The school structure dominated the
characters in the short-film, similar to Versialles dominating over Antoinette (camera
angles help the perception). The girls in Lick the Stars were without a
voice. A “masculine principal’ was stationed over the camera. He exerted power on
Kate and her friends with a point-of-view camera angle, as the group broke the
rules (Kennedy, 42). The Virgin Suicides dealt with a group of girls being
objectified and led to the question of committing suicide. Coppola’s films explored
the objectification, idealization, and definition of female characters by the film
and by society. Antoinette in Marie Antoinette is limited by the image
and identity imposed on her by society. In Lost in Translation, Coppola
depicted an unconsummated relationship in Charlotte and Bob. Bob, portrayed as the
“wiser” of the two, was more lost than his younger love interest, Charlotte
(Kennedy, 47). She wished to highlight a culture of absence in a world defined
by a culture of excess. Bob and Charlotte attended strip clubs, karaoke bars,
and Buddhist temples, but the cultural glow ended as a farce (Kennedy 47).
Culture in the film is absent, as the film is did not have interest in portraying a true Japanese culture.
Marie Antoinette follows the Queen engulfed in a culture she does not
feel connected to. She had to be bored by the mundane daily routines and limited
freedom she had in her clothing choices, feeding her baby, and inviting her own
guests to functions. Coppola expresses culture can lack substance even if
perceived to be grand and amusing.
Citations:
Ferriss,
Suzanne and Mallory Young. ““Marie Antoinette”: Fashion, Third-Wave Feminism,
and Chick Culture.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, 2010, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43797666?casa_token=jNKkimehREsAAAAA%3AQhSJBW6pOhEakz2Trjrtwsvsuj7lcudAp75hVaDyY3NVsVCFCtz57X0ZWRgBqqrYQm2q4PxNJ6FgMs4NINcNS1m3rhmdeKHe2iarQW6i5j9oKOPdl8Y.
Accessed 26 February 2023.
Kennedy,
Todd. “Off With Hollywood’s Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur.” Film Critics,.
vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44019394?casa_token=J9uuCTTaCcUAAAAA%3A3lndRpHD5RNNJ6mnS9LoDOW6PJ6ptaSroP7Mg26YQylo5ky60oKeMyJcT1-i-R9Cx7_Edz74Ja9hLgssaM96pBMjpLVZsf4yoItSH0I4-55Zx-hLzxs.
Accessed 26 February 2023.
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