Kirsten Dunst interpretation - Marie Antoinette (2006) Discussion

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] francescof86 13 years ago

I don't think so. Antonia Fraser herself thought that Kirsten Dunst was perfectly cast(you can hear her thoughts about Dunst and the movie in the bonus of the dvd),saying that she embodied the famous grace of Marie Antoinette. Yes,there are sides of Lux Lisbon that you can find in her Marie Antoinette. But one of the most interesting thing I found in the personal view of Coppola was the similarities between Lux and Marie Antoinette. You know,Marie Antoinette was naive,feisty and immature. Basically I do believe that she was like a child for most of her life.You can't ignore that. Even Fraser,Lever,Castelot and Zweig agreed that she was frivolus and immature. She begin to understand the importance of her actions and her role as a Queen after the affair of the necklace. But you can't ignore that she was a sort of "party girl" and that she was the Queen of the Trianon (for her beloved friends)rather than the Queen of France for most of her life. If you take some of the assumptions of Fraser, she clearly says that she was like a rebel child because she liked to break every burden and she created a world where her and friends party all the time ,ignoring the world outside. If you wanted to see in the movie the sad chapter of her life(where she completely changed into a real woman) the movie shows only few scenes that I found very well acted by Dunst. But this is not the focus of the movie. Coppola is more interested to show the private life of her rather than her public life as a queen.

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] FloatingOpera7 13 years ago

I think Kirsten Dunst is lousy in this movie. The real problem was that Coppola should never have made a movie about the life of Marie Antoinette at all. She can't use a historical figure's life as a follow-up to Virgin Suicides and movies that are modern and have nothing to do with Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution of the 1790's. It's completely unrelated and far-off. It doesn't work with the style that she used for the other movie.

Kirsten Dunst is the worst Marie Antoinette ever. Even Norma Shearer in the 1938 version is superior. Kirsten keeps a stupid smile on her face almost the whole time and looks as if she's in the wrong movie. Like the previous post mentions, she's just playing dress up and seems to even be winking at the audience: "Look it's me Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette". That's all she does too because her performance is terrible. She doesn't have the right expressions or the right type of demeanor. She doesn't use an accent, which ought to be sort of Austrian-German and sort of French. She speaks like today's young American girls. The modern pop music used for the film didn't work either, it felt too crazy. It was anachronistic and plain awful.

Bad movie but the costumes and the actual use of Versailles Palace was great

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] FloatingOpera7 13 years ago

Totally agree. I went to Versailles only last month and the rooms of the palace in the movie look different. They did shoot at the Hotel de Soubise in the Marais district in Paris. The rooms at Versailles did look different although they clearly did film inside the Queen's Room, that is the bedroom where Marie slept at in Versailles, the bedroom that was raided by the angry mob that stormed the palace.

They used great exterior shots of Versailles and the gardens. I had seen this movie prior to going to Versailles so it was nice being there and actually walking around the "real life" set they used!..the shots of the Canal (which is cross shaped) is wonderful. I was unable to go into the Petit Trianon and L'Hameau because I don't remember if it was closed or if I just didn't have the time and energy left. Versailles is so big it seems to take up more than one day even. It's a great place to film a movie. I don't know why they never thought of filming there before for other movies.

Kirsten Dunst is too modern for this movie. She is so out of place here. I'm sure that if she hadn't been cast they might have used a British actress - inevitably. In every costume drama, there's always British actors! It would have sounded funny though to have Marie Antoinette talk in a British accent, just it is funny to me to have Bris playing the part of French people. It's not just her modern day American accent, she is totally unsuited to costume dramas. Was this her first ? She just doesn't have it in her to do period pieces. Maybe they could have used a newer face, a French actress who was in her 20's or something like that with experience in costume dramas.

What I hate the most though is when American girls use a fake British accent. At least Kirsten didn't do a fake accent which would have been ten times worse. Look at Natalie Portman and her God awful British accent. She used it for Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl and it was ghastly. And now in that stupid new comedy Her Highness her British accent is so bad. ugh...that's not the right way to sound British. Why not just be British in the first place LOL

The worst British accent I heard by an American was Drew Berrymore in Ever After...it's the worst!

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] FloatingOpera7 13 years ago

According to the Wikipedia article about the 2006 Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette, the production crew was given unlimited access to Versailles. They were allowed to film in the Hameau de La Reine or Queen's Hamlet, the little farm where Marie Antoinette pretended to be a milk maid and milked cows and had chickens. The lake and little farm is still there and it's open to the public in tourist season. They do show the farm in the movie when she's with her daughter and her girlfriends enjoying the "fake country life" she had established there. They shot at Petit Trianon and it's exterior is visible in the movie. They filmed inside Marie Antoinette's Theater, in the scene in which she's singing in the role of a peasant girl. They shot in the gardens, in the Canal, and the exterior of the front of the palace of Versailles. They used the Hotel de Soubise in Paris for some interior shots. You also see the Royal Theater of Versailles in the scene where Marie applauds at the end of the opera performance, and you also see the white Royal Chapel in the wedding scene early in the movie and the Sunday Mass scene. You also see the staircase at the back of the palace where the gardens begin facing the Orangerie and you also see the Latona fountain and Neptune fountain.

At any rate, this movie is the one movie where they show more of Versailles than in any other movie unless I'm mistaken. I haven't seen that many movies about Versailles and the life of the French royals. I did see exterior shots of the palace in the now forgotten TV series from the 80's "La Revolution Francaise" which starred Jane Seymour as Marie Antoinette. It has been photographed and filmed for documentaries and for some French-made movies. There are many good French films about Marie Antoinette and about Louis the 14th as well. These show Versailles.

The Versailles shown in the 1938 American movie Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer is clearly fake set. It's too over the top and grand and looks nothing like the real Versailles, which I found to be actually more simplistic. Look at the grand ballroom scene in the '38 version and it's so not the real Versailles but more of a fantasy Versailles.

If Coppola had focused on more authenticity which included the Revolution and the execution by guillotine, this would have been the perfect Marie Antoinette movie considering they were using the right locations for it.

i also hate that she didn't include the Affair of the Necklace which was highly important in the downfall and unpopularity of Marie.

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[–] francescof86 13 years ago

I think that the accent is a silly topic.Since the movie is american, what accent shuould kirsten have adopted?British?Nonsense,Marie Antoinette was austrian who adopted french.Plus the actors are not british,so the american accent she used was appropriate even if anachronistic.French accent?Totally unnecessary.Since the actors are american,should they have to speak with a french accent?it would have been too forced. So the way they speak is right. I can think only the case of Kate Winslet in The reader. She adopted a german accent but only for continuity because the entire cast(exept Ralph Fiennes who was blamed for not using a german accent,even if I found all the criticism unnecessary because I liked his work)was german.In that case it's a right choice. I disagree about the performance of Dunst.To me,it was perfect. Really beautiful and snubbed by the Academy.

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[–] bazman666 13 years ago

Go Kirsten I had one of the best days ever when my gf at the time took me to see this at the cinemas. I thought it was a perfectly entertaining interpretation of what could have been a boring period film. Saw it in a full cinema and the atmosphere was like a party type Feeling that reflected the fun of watching this cool film and Kirsten is just so fun to watch, I loved her in this role and I really hope her critical acclaim she is getting for melancholia causes people to into her back catalogue and re-evaluate some performances that have been dismissed

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[–] Otter (24464) 7 years ago

I think they should have included the German accent, even if it meant using another actress. Diane Kruger, maybe?

The film missed one thing about MA and it's a biggie - she spent her adult life being a foreigner, an immigrant queen, and her foreignness played a big part in her unpopularity. Dunst gives her MA the same accent as everyone else in the movie, even though she was shown arriving in France there's absolutely no sense of her being a different nationality than the people around her.

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[–] rc1990 7 years ago

Kirsten was asked at Cannes if there was a connection and MA and she said there was NONE.

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[–] sarizonana 12 years ago

Tamzin Merchant would have been a great choice.

Who is Tamzin Merchant?
She is the actress who played Catherine Howard in the tv series the Tudors.
She was great in that role.
The best performance I've seen with a role of this type: a silly, naive, young and pretty girl
I've three performances of this style and believe me Tamzin has been the best
I've seen
Uma Thurman in Dangerous Liaisons
Kristen Dunst Marie Antoniette
Selma Blair Cruel Intentions
And my already mentioned Tamzin Merchant in The Tudors.

Catherine was Like Marie Antoniette a young and naive girl who became a Queen When she wasn't prepared for it.
Catherien was hatted by everyone and sadly was executed the same way as Marie Antonitte, instead of the guillotine in england was used the Axe or A sword.

Both at the end Catherine Howard and Antoniette were very similar

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[–] MydnightRose 12 years ago

Kirsten Dunst was bad in this film but Tamzin would have been worse. There was some depth to Marie, and she was not the 18th century Paris Hilton. That is how Kirsten played her and how Tamzin played Catherine Howard.

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[–] Aim-JE 12 years ago

Marie-Antoinette and Catherine Howard were nothing alike. MA was raised to be a queen. CH was NOT - and her being beheaded after only two years of marriage shows that. Their husbands were certainly different too. MA's marriage was a political arrangement, as was H8's and Anne of Cleves'. If AoC had been a woman as inconsequential as CH, she might have met a similar fate, but that would have been politically disastrous for H8. The comparison is ridiculous.

"Pay no attention to the man in the trunk."

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[–] drouais 12 years ago

marie-antoinette was actually one of the youngest of her siblings, and only came to become a queen because of a reversal in political alliances, family deaths, and illness that allowed her to rise in the order of eligible brides. her education was rushed, and she was never meant to become a queen.

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[–] Aim-JE 12 years ago

That doesn't change the indisputable fact that Marie-Antoinette was raised as royalty. Catherine Howard was not, although she could read and write.

"Pay no attention to the man in the trunk."

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[–] drouais 12 years ago

i wasn't disputing that, i was countering your statement that marie-antoinette was "born to be a queen," which she wasn't and which is different from being "raised as royalty".

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[–] Otter (24464) 7 years ago

She was born to be royalty, but wasn't born or raised to rule.

Neither was her husband Louis, for that matter, he was a second son and was horrified when his older brother died and left him as dauphin and then king. He never rose to the occasion, he was a weak and indecisive king, and an idiot who stopped for a 20-course dinner when he needed to run for his life.

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[–] FredNotGeorge 12 years ago

Dunst is perfect as MA in every way.

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[–] MsEmmaFrost 8 years ago

She was very good with MA's shallow, selfish side. I think it's missing the haughtiness and autocratic convictions.

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[–] Dan_Garten 8 years ago

Oh.

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[–] tara_r_a 8 years ago

Kirsten Dunst is a good actress, she made us sympathetic to her character, I liked her portrayal. Only thing is that she didn't age on screen and stayed waifish-ly thin till the end.

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[–] LetThemEatCake01 7 years ago

hER PERformance is amazing in many ways like you said, for instance when she looks at Louis eating and he looks at her and she does this incredibly moving gesture with a smile, or when she is talking to Mercy about having enough diamonds she totally captured who Marie Antoinette was, the fun loving, charming Queen that was good natured but could also be haughty, it's all there but unfortunately the performance is somehow ruined by ridiculous gestures like when she meets Noailles for the first time and her dog is taken away and she says goodbye to her maidens and does this ridiculous yes nod that actors do all the time that I've NEVER seen anyone do in real life, or her ridiculous face when she is told she finally delivered a boy.

But the good definitely outweighs the bad in here, for instance the opera scene, and the birthday party scene, that IS Marie Antoinette, I've seen almost all film portrayals of Marie Antoinette and they've all been caricatures in one way or another, the most complete being of course Norma Shearer's, but even her performance lacks Dunst's authenticity and how she captured Antoinette's jovial spirit. Now how much of that is acting and how much is Dunst playing herself I don't know because Dunst said she didn't research or read anything about Marie Antoinette in preparation for the role, which I thought was somewhat mediocre, if it was her just playing herself then Coppola understood that she had the qualities Antoinette had and in that case it was genius casting, because Kirsten doesn't even look like Antoinette but had her spirit.

This was Marie Antoinette come to life really, Dunst will always be Antoinette to me.

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[–] kellycallie (728) 5 years ago

I thought she was excellent. Mostly in her emotion and non-verbal acting rather than spoken performance. Of course her appearance as well. The personality change was also done very well, from an awkward and somewhat sad girl to pleasure seeking woman and then to a callous b*tch near the end.

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