by MARK SLUTSKY

Marie Antoinette may never have actually said “Let them eat cake,” but in Sofia Coppola’s cinematic treatment of the young queen’s life, she sure wolfs down a lot of the stuff. Booed and ballyhooed in equal measure since its premiere at Cannes this year, Marie Antoinette appears more revolutionary (no pun intended) at first glance than it actually is.

It’s costume drama as ’80s movie, royal marriage as a candy-coloured teen dream. At least that’s the idea, because the fact that the movie is based on verifiable history (and the biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser) ultimately feels like a constraint for Coppola. Beneath the frothy trappings is a straight period drama, and by the time the story runs its course, the film’s spunky stylistics aren’t enough to prop up a story where not that much happens.

It’s the story of a highly formalized, highly ritualized existence at court, an existence that wasn’t particularly exciting even at the best (or worst) of times—which may be the point.

We first meet the young Maria Antonia (Kirsten Dunst) at home in Vienna, where she learns of her impending marriage to the young French dauphin who would one day become Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). The friendly, young blonde is handed over to the French in an elaborate ceremony in a specially built tent that straddles the border, where she leaves all her possessions behind and becomes, officially, French.

She’s introduced to the court: Louis XV (played robustly by Rip Torn) and his lover Madame du Barry (a foxy Asia Argento), the Comtesse de Noailles (Judy Davis), her expert on protocol and etiquette, her new, gossipy “aunts” (Molly Shannon and Shirley Henderson), and of course, her husband-to-be.

Schwartzman, who occasionally lifts the movie into straight comedy, embodies the young prince as an awkward, charmless and round little fellow with little interest beyond his hobby of key-making. It’s his sexual reluctance—and the subsequent delay in producing a crucial heir—that, Coppola implies, drives Marie Antoinette to distraction. Literally, an avalanche of sweets, shoes and other pastel frivolity embody the queen’s notorious decadence, the behaviour that made her a flashpoint for the bread-less peoples’ anger.

Coppola soundtracks the royal partying-down with a sweet playlist of alt-’80s staples: Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure and New Order, giving Marie Antoinette the air of a New Romantic fever dream.

The elaborate social rules and pecking order of the royal court actually make sense re-cast as if we’re in John Hughes high school territory—the gossip, the giggling, the cliques, the all-night birthday bashes. Particular attention is given to the royal waking-up ceremony, where nobility is allowed to dress the queen in order of their relative status. It’s all so absurd that at one point Dunst exclaims “This is ridiculous!” To which the very dry Judy Davis replies, “No, madame. This is Versailles.”

But much as with the real Marie Antoinette (or so you assume), what starts charming and funny eventually becomes tedious. Two hours is really too long to watch the gang at their protracted leisure activities, particularly as the movie cuts out before the royal family’s grim demise. There are some artful, delightful moments here, but the film’s willful, playful emptiness eventually, inevitably, overtakes it.

Marie Antoinette opens this Friday, Oct. 20

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