Cake Eater

She was spoiled, young, misunderstood. And she was the Queen of France. She thought she was beloved, but the jewels and outrageous outfits and opulance of Versailles were far more expensive than the taxies levied on the people of France. They cost her her head.

Marie Antoinette is making a popular come back. I'm reading the tome by Antonia Fraser. A movie starring Kristen Dunst as the teen queen and directed by Sofia Coppala comes out this fall. And a documentary film by David Grubin (who I once interned for in college) will be airing on PBS.

Certainly she is fascinating, in the way a car crash attracts attention -- you can't look away. And her story is larger than life, great fodder for melodrama no matter how it's staged. Still. It's a little creepy to know that in some ways, she'll be viewed with sympathy. Her mother, Austrian royalty, ruled her family and husband while telling her daughter to submit to her French king. She married off her youngest at the age of 14 to form a successful alliance in France. Fraser in her book even describes Marie Antoinette as a spy and a sleeper cell for her mother.

Apparently, Sofia Coppala's homage is post-modern, with the cake-loving queen clad in Converse sneakers and rocking out to Siouxsie and the Banshees. The movie was booed at Cannes, although I'm not sure if it was because it was an impressionistic rather than historic portrayal, or if it was simply too kind to the woman who inspired a revolution. Or if that's just French.