Marie Antoinette, Part Two
Our wrap-up recap of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette follows, sadly, the wrap-up of Marie’s life. We compare and contrast the movie to reality, and try to untangle the movie’s timeline adjustments.
When we last left Marie, the cool kids were sneaking back into Versailles after an all-night party only to learn that the king was ill with smallpox. Marie and Louis had yet to consummate their marriage and the spend-a-thon of the monarchy was going full steam ahead while political unrest bubbled up in the lower classes.
So heat up some water and make yourself a cup of blooming Jasmine Tea like Marie serves to her brother, the Emperor (so I guess it’s good enough for us common folk) and start playing the music from the opera, Les Deux Chasseurs et la Laitière that she performs (and fakes sweeping) and let’s revisit some moments of this episode!
The king is on his death bed, and Du Barry is sent out out of the picture in the most fabulous cape!
The king is dead, long live the king…whose first statement is a reassuring,”We are too young to reign!”
We need to fix this baby problem…a king, an emperor, and an elephant have a sex talk.
GASP…Oooh!
The talk worked…well, the talk and the brown chickens and brown cows.
Wonder what it was like to be a servant in Marie’s household? Here’s an article about la maison de La Reine!
Oh my goodness, did they or didn’t they? Marie and Axel Von Fersen did, or didn’t, all over the place in this movie.
And we spend a lot of time at le Petit Trianon…yay!
Marie’s hameau was inspired by this garden!
But then there is trouble…Marie can only fantasize about Adam Ant…
…and Louis gets a lot of bad advice about sending money to the Americans’ war with the British (and he needs to stop playing around.)
Louis gives us an insider “Cribs” view of Versailles:
A bright spot is another child, a son! The Dauphin! (and Susan’s hang-up about non-newborns playing newborns is revealed.)
But Marie’s reputation is swirling the drain (and told with a clever use of paintings.)
Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun
Speaking of paintings…liberties were taken with the number of children and composition of actual painting, but it’s still really good storytelling.
Also Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun
Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun (the artist who is shown here) didn’t paint the portrait they are posing for!
Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller did.
The French Revolution is amping up, Louis makes some more poor decisions for his family and while Marie really did address the angry crowd like this, it wasn’t enough.
We were grateful that the movie ended with Marie’s trashed room after the family was taken to Paris.
If you haven’t had enough of Marie (really? Is there enough of Marie?) head on over to our coverage of her entire life, in Episodes 53 and Episode 54 of The History Chicks Podcast.
We also recommend these two books to go along with this movie:
And if you are as fascinated as we are with Leonard, here’s a book we liked!
Will Bashor
Photo Credit: Marie Antoinette, Netflix; Stills: The History Chicks via Netflix
