Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette: Great Cast, Wonderful Costumes. What Else?

Most of my friends warned me, upon hearing my interest in seeing Sophia Coppola's new film Marie Antoinette, that the story would likely have little historical merit, but I'm a fan of Lost in Translation, so I went. Though I was willing to allow for some liberties with historicity, I expected plot.

So, what did I get for my $10 ticket? A painfully drawn out ode to fashion. Scene upon scene of giggling teenage girls ogling pretty dresses and shoes, while gossiping about slutty foes and crushes; endless visuals of mundane ceremony: meals, getting dressed, preparing for bed; and mind numbingly repetitious dialogue about will she or won't she get pregnant-is her husband gay? is she not charming enough to seduce him? Honestly, I could hear Maureen Dowd and Gloria Steinem heaving into a barf bag as I watched each overpriced scene run its course. Actually, I'm not uber-feminist, I love fashion, and I'm a pretty girly chick, so for this to irritate me means it's pretty bad.

Lets start from the beginning. I did like the modern song (can't remember the title or band though) that runs during the opening credits, that kind of works. But pretty much from there after things fall apart. Coppola, later in the film, takes the use of modern songs way too far when she has King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette dance to a Sousie and the Banchees song. 

Coppola, for some reason also decides to use shaky documentary style camera work in some of the scenes, which is a glaring anachronism in any serious period piece, not to mention a little too take a peak into a few of the diary pages of a teenage girl who just happened to be royalty for me. It's shameless pandering to the 12-17 year old girl demographic and assumes that anyone who comes to see the film is too vapid to understand the information if it isn't watered down and laced with pop culture references.