Let them hear New Wave!
Dr. S beat even Daily GreenCine in bringing the new teaser trailer for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette to my attention. If you've ever held a Virgin Suicides-meets-Barry Lyndon theme party at your house, you are way ahead of this movie. Otherwise, you probably aren't.
I was among the agnostics about Coppola's Lost in Translation, but I admit, the sheer unexpectedness of this trailer and the info that Judy Davis and Aurore Clément are both in the cast have really piqued my interest. The only person I feel for is Norma Shearer, who really acquits herself quite well in the 1938 version, but she sure is about to look awfully stodgy.
Labels: Movies 2006, Norma Shearer
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 4:46 PM
9 Comments:
Oh, hooray! You know that I love being first, and that I always try to be way hip, and I feel as though I succeeded with this one. I really like the idea of a movie about Marie-Antoinette-as-Rock-Star, in style of...whom? I can't actually think of anyone genuinely cool. Like the ultimate party-pin-up girl. What clinched the whole thing for me was the pink title at the very end. That, and the idea of Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI, saying "Bravo! bravo!"
A lot of people hate this trailer, so it's heartening to see some love here. Kirsten Dunst looks absolutely radiant.
It's just so little the way one usually thinks of a biopic, and the juxtaposition of a story everyone thinks s/he knows with a) an American twentysomething actress and b) new wave music suggests that this one's going to drive home just how wrapped up in ourselves we get as we're living through history. From the second that trailer began, I felt as though I was getting a fresh look at a historical moment, rather than just a deadened museum piece. And that's very exciting--especially since I think I can use it in a class next fall!
I'm not so sure. I can see why people hate it, actually: it makes me worry the movie's just going to be a giggly fiasco. At least it has some energy though.
It might actually be *because* it looks like a giggly fiasco that I am excited for it, which is not to say that I love bad movies for their own badness. But in a lot of ways, Marie Antoinette's life was something of a giggly fiasco, no? Then again: if this movie tries to pitch us Kirsten Dunst playing a 37-year-old M.A. on her way to death, I'll be highly skeptical. It all depends on how full a range of her life Coppola tries to offer. Since she was 19 when she took the throne, if the time around the coronation is what dominates the film, I still think it could be rockin' cool even if it's very silly. But I've been *way* wrong before, and I am also a sucker for trailers that do anything slightly out of the way.
(Tim, thanks, by the way, for your review of King Kong--I've been alerting people over here to it, and excitement is mounting.)
That's why I'm excited, too—hardly because I think Coppola needs to retread the ground of gossamer young womanhood, but applying her aesthetic amid such unexpected historical circumstances, which occupy the popular imagination in such a different way, sounds like an exciting idea to me. I would see it seems like a good Godardian idea, but I don't want to imagine Sofia saying, "Oh my gosh, wow, I mean yeah" in that uniquely opiate way of hers.
Two words: Ken Russell.
We shall see.
Oh, come now. One must love Dante's Inferno. And Percy Shelley's dream of Mary's eyeball-breasts has never been so realized.
(tee hee)
Okay: the two responses I've gotten to the M.A. trailer, which I'm making everyone watch:
"Um, is this a mistake?....... Ohhhh, I get it. Cool."
"Oh my GOD! This is TERRIBLE!!! Look at me! look at me! running around in period costumes! I'm Kirsten Dunst!...Jason Schwartzman should have to hang upside down and kiss her in that wig."
So now I'm *really* excited. This could be a real rorschach blot of a movie.
Post a Comment
<< Home