Marie Antoinette

On sunday I finally got some time to see this movie that I’ve read so much about. It certainly has evoked a lot of response from film critics and all other types of cultural pundits (I read a good review in NYRB). So expectations were sky high. And it delivered, at least the first 2/3 did. The first half all I could think was omigod I love this film. But towards the ending something was left wanting. I figured it out later: M.A did not seem to grow at all, I mean she had several children but still she does not seem to change so much. Her priorities still seem to be the same. This I could not understand.

Since having a child fifteen months ago so many things changed, I do not feel like a child anymore. Well actually I think my childhood was lost when we had a miscarriage before I got pregnant with my son. First there was the yearning for a child, then for a few weeks we thought our future was changed, we planned for the new family member, then this new life disappeared in a flood of blood and gore and pain and tears. It was a very small labour. And a small grief, that passed in time. But the little wound was kept raw until we had our first child. Now the grief is almost gone. But instead I have fears and worries, because I have so much that could be taken away, and every day I have more love that could be destroyed.

This aspect of life and of becoming a mother was not visible in M.A. This bothered me. And over all her becoming a mother was somehow strangely treated. For instance the film gives the impression she only had three (two surviving) children, but she actually had four. I guess a filmmaker has do decide on what aspects to focus on, and in this case the focus was on the same type of description of girlhood that Coppola treated in her two earlier films. I love this take on being a girl in our time and culture, but many girls also become mothers, and in M.A:a case it would have been interesting to see how this new state of being would have affected her – or interesting to me that is, but I guess I’m biased…

But otherwise Coppola is one of my top three directors at the moment, she makes beautiful, funny and clever films and no one else takes girls as seriously as Coppola does.