Sofia Coppola, centre, with Jason Schwartzman and Kristen Dunst on the set of “Marie Antoinette,” filmed at the Palace of Versailles.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
In the opening minutes of Sofia Coppola’s lavish 2006 period film Marie Antoinette, Empress Maria Theresa (played by singer Marianne Faithfull) sends her 14-year-old daughter (Kirsten Dunst) to Versailles to marry the future Louis XVI. Stressing the union’s political importance, she warns her daughter: “All eyes will be on you.”
Two decades later, those words remain the thesis of Coppola’s most ambitious film to date, and they’re newly relevant as its 4K restoration makes its Canadian streaming debut on Mubi on Nov. 6. Paired with the movie’s comeback is Making Marie Antoinette, a posthumously released documentary by the filmmaker’s late mother, Eleanor.
Shot during the making of the original production, the doc follows a bronchitis-weakened 34-year-old Coppola as she transforms Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors into what she called a “high-school quad” – a pressure cooker of popular-girl antics and performative bullying. Read by actress Diane Lane, excerpts from Eleanor’s journals capture her amazement at her daughter’s access to the palace and her anxiety as Sofia commands a reported cast of 71 and crew of 133.
“So many worries are running through my heart and mind,” Eleanor wrote. “Sofia looks too small and unprepossessing to be the director of a $40-million movie. I wonder why she chose a historical figure in a foreign culture.”
Coppola’s vision for the 2006 film blended 18th-century extravagance with contemporary youth culture.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
By then, Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter was already fluent in the themes of alienation, teenage anxiety and fame. Her 1999 debut, The Virgin Suicides, examined high school notoriety, and 2003’s Lost in Translation explored the isolation of a faded Hollywood star. Yet revisiting Marie Antoinette through the lens of the Coppola matriarch reveals additional layers.
Oscar-winning costume designer Milena Canonero was intrinsic to Dunst’s portrayal of the queen. Looks that could have easily been dismissed as cinematic indulgence instead reflected an important message about femininity, rebellion and royal rearing. From the moment Dunst as Marie Antoinette sheds her Austrian-stitched frock and steps into French formal attire – a new uniform of propriety with a hat and gloves, dramatic neckline and rigid bustle – the audience becomes aware of the sartorial transformation unfolding.
“It does help to have the corset on,” Dunst said in the 2007 DVD featurette. “It felt like [Marie Antoinette] was a little bird trying to get out of all these restrictions.”
Dunst behind the scenes of “Marie Antoinette,” for which costume designer Milena Canonero created 72 original original dresses.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
In a key scene, she is shocked by the dressing ceremony, in which rank determines who hands her underwear and shoes. Marie Antoinette gripes, “This is ridiculous.” Her lady-in-waiting reminds her: “This, Madame, is Versailles.”
To drive home the pomp and circumstance, Coppola wooed Canonero – who had designed costumes on A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and The Shining – to join the project. When designing 72 original dresses for Dunst, Canonero revealed that her shared aesthetic vision with Coppola strayed from the strict limits of historical accuracy.
“Sofia didn’t want to go into the expected classical look,” she explained in the 2007 featurette. “She asked me to come up with another solution, what I call a stylization…a psychological use for costume or colour.”
Instead of the expected royal blues, burgundies and golds, Coppola and Canonero chose a more inventive palette: bright yellow, magenta, mint green and robin’s-egg blue, fuelled by 1980s New Romantic pop and punk rock. The regal gothic look of punk singer Siouxsie Sioux guided a Parisian party outfit, while musician Adam Ant inspired the regalia of the queen’s lover, Count Axel von Fersen.
Dunst and Schwartzman portray Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in Coppola’s lavish reinterpretation of French royal life.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
Canonero was tasked with making each look feel like a new chapter in the young royal’s life. With up to five scenes requiring distinct attire shot per day, the costumer described, in the new doc, the pace as “a marathon following an avalanche – we are just trying to keep ahead.”
Among the highlights are the monarch’s elaborate gold-flecked wedding gown, frocks matching floral arrangements and platters of hyper-saturated food, ornamental wigs and a strawberry-print dress. Later in the film, the wardrobe softens into relaxed garden dresses as Marie Antoinette retreats to her version of cottage life at the Petit Trianon.
Countering that earthiness is a hyper saturated montage of shoes, pastries, candy, card games and champagne set to Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy, in which a pair of Converse sneakers appears. The pastel high tops caused a flap among critics, but Coppola wasn’t interested in hiding anachronisms. Instead, as Canadian historian Carolyn Harris said by phone from her office in Toronto, the Italian-American director chose to place them front and centre.
That decision echoed Marie Antoinette’s own relationship to non-conformity. Harris, author of Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie Antoinette, noted that her attire was far from superficial.
Production transformed Versailles into a movie set.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
“Marie Antoinette made deliberate choices with her fashions to shape a public image,” said Harris. “One key decision was her relationship with dressmaker Rose Bertin, whom Marie encouraged to maintain her Paris shop to engage with wider fashion trends outside the court and outside of France. She was helping shape a fashion economy and exerting influence, even as it became a political liability.”
This is reflected in the evolution of her wardrobe from the constricting court gowns of the 1770s to the lightweight chemise dresses of the 1780s, a shift Harris said was “considered beneath the dignity of a queen.”
Coppola, herself the founder of streetwear brand Milkfed and a longtime muse of designer Marc Jacobs, drew on her own era-defining high-low tastes. In addition to remixing New Romantic imagery, her references included John Galliano’s work at Dior, which reimagined 18th-century silhouettes for contemporary audiences. She also followed the advice of her father: “I told her the more it was personal, the more it was her impression of what [Versailles] was like, the better it will be,” he said in the featurette.
Canadian-American photographer Robert Polidori, who has documented Versailles since 1983, said by phone from his studio in California that the queen’s connection to youth culture endures.
The film explores the pressures of royal life through the eyes of a teenage queen.Sofia Coppola/Supplied
“She was the last queen to be in Versailles, so we have the most remnants of her public and private selves through her quarters,” he said. Polidori added that her young, tragic death puts her in the same space culturally as icons such as Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix.
Like Coppola, Polidori has also contextualized Marie Antoinette for new audiences.
“She and we are living at the end of an era of opulence,” he said. Considering the legacy of this grandeur – from the student-led protests in France to the billionaires who recreate Versailles-style interiors – Polidori noted how Louis XIV’s aesthetic birthed a new way of thinking.
Coppola’s film highlights this excess, yet the audience is also directed to consider its consequences. Her interpretation remains a rare one: it is sympathetic without being overly celebratory. The parties, desserts, jewels and gowns are intoxicating, but there is a sombreness beneath the splendour.
After two decades, the return of Marie Antoinette alongside Eleanor Coppola’s personal record offers two perspectives on one larger-than-life project: a daughter creating her version of history, and a mother quietly and lovingly supporting her.