They were going to make me a major for this and I wasn't even in their fucking army anymore

Since seeing it in the theatre Friday night (before World Trade Center....after Talladegah Nights), I've been mildly obsessed with the teaser trailer for Marie Antoinette. Certainly New Order's "Age of Consent" has something to do with it. The full trailer ups the ante with Gang of Four's "Natural's Not In It", which is rather odd to hear pouring out of a Dolby Surround Sound system at a huge multi-plex, especially in a preview for what initially looks to be a piece of French royalist apologia. Of course, I haven't seen it yet (comes out later this fall sometime), but that would fit the usual S. Coppola profile.

My main problem with her films is not that they aspire primarily to the look and emotional content of a music video landscape, but that I am pretty cashed out when it comes to laying out 10 bucks so I can sit in the jury box for the exquisitly patterned bum-outs of the rich and existential chores of the idle. Whether your setting is Grosse Pointe or Versailles or a Japanese luxury hotel, the point of cinema should not be to elicit sympathy for characters who are quite fine without it. Miss Coppola seems not to have taken that under advisement. While some of her imagery is quite lovely (I'm thinking of a particular actress in sheer panties, but fill in your own here), and she does a good job of letting actors sort themselves out (Josh Hartnett strutting down the high school hall in stud mode, Bill Murray being Bill Murray and playing Bill Murray into the ground; neither characterization is so disagreeable), this doesn't seem enough framework to tell a historically important story. Maybe she'll surprise us.

Did I just turn into fucking David Denby?



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