When Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” was released in 2006, it seemed to have little in common with her acclaimed debut feature, “Lost in Translation.” But a closer look, beyond the period setting and massive scope, reveals that both films are basically about the same thing: young women, in great groups of people, who nevertheless feel incurably alone. “I can relate to being an observer,” Coppola explained in a Q&A following a screening of the film Thursday night at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. “I’ve been around a lot of exciting atmospheres, and sometimes I connect with it, and sometimes I feel like I’m observing.”
READ MORE: Sofia Coppola Talks The Teenage Dream Of Her Striking ‘Virgin Suicides’ Debut [Interview]
The MAD screening was part of a series of films presented for “The World of Anna Sui,” their current exhibition celebrating the work of the distinctive fashion designer. Sui and Coppola have been friends for years; “Marie Antoinette” directly influenced Sui’s Spring 2007 collection.
But not everyone responded to the film with that kind of enthusiasm. It was originally greeted with mixed reviews and lukewarm box office (what can you do, no one knew what the hell to make of “Barry Lyndon” either); alarmingly few critics or viewers seemed to tune in to its bold risks, broad winks, and cheerful anachronisms. But those unexpected flourishes were what made Coppola want to make the picture in the first place.
READ MORE: The 100 Best Films Of The Decade [2010s]
“The first way I was drawn to that period was from the New Romantic period in the ’80s, Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow – I always loved that period,” she said. She found her source material in Antonia Fraser’s 2001 book “Marie Antoinette: A Journey.” “I thought her biography was so touching,” Coppola recalled. “I thought, you know, she was just a 14-year-old girl, and they didn’t like the Austrians, and she was in the position where you just couldn’t win. So I was really drawn to it first by the setting and the visuals, and then by telling a girl’s story of growing up in that extreme situation.”
READ MORE: 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2020
Her film does indeed key in on Marie’s youth, particularly in its early stretches; she sobs when she has to leave her beloved puppy behind, as a lady-in-waiting sneers, “She looks like a child.” Not long after, Coppola writes and stages a gossipy royal dinner scene like the dining room at Versailles is a high school cafeteria. So the music, much of which makes its way into the 19th-century story, was simply inextricable for the director. “I was a teenager in the ‘80s,” she shrugged, “so I was thinking of them of teenagers, and relating them to my teenage time.”
Fraser didn’t just write the book. “She was very helpful to me and was an adviser because she did so much research,” Coppola said, adding, with a laugh, “and like Marie Antoinette, I wanted to just focus on the pretty things…”
To do her own research – on the “pretty things,” at least – Coppola and her mother Eleanor visited Andrew Bolton, head curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, to see costumes from that period. “The colors of those clothes, they were minty greens and pinks and colors that you wouldn’t expect,” Coppola said, “because in movies they always look more faded or earth-toned. So I was struck by that, that was sort of the starting point.” In devising the costumes, hair, and make-up with her design team, many of whom came from the world of fashion,
“we started with the references.” But, from that point, “we were interpreting it a little bit, to make it appealing to the modern eye, especially with the hair and make-up. It was based on the style of that period, and the fabrics and the colors really were based on the colors that they wore, from the paintings and the fabrics we could find at that time. And then we played with it.”
The primary goal, she explained, was not historical fidelity (as anyone who remembers the Chuck Taylors in Marie’s closet can attest). “I was really more interested in being impressionistic, and in capturing what I thought she was like, and hoped that I make it accurate enough that it could pass. But my focus was really the feeling.”
The production itself offered plenty of challenges and incredible access – particularly to the Palace of Versailles itself. “They really just gave us the keys to the palace,” Coppola said, attributing their good luck to her first film. “We went to Versailles, and the people who were in charge were very kind to me and open, and they liked ‘Lost in Translation.’ So they said ok, you can make your film here.” The practicalities of shooting at the real location were occasional discombobulating for Coppola. “One day we were filming in the hall of mirrors and I walked through Marie Antoinette’s real bedroom, and all our equipment cases were in there. We were just using her bedroom as her storage room for our camera cases.”
Sui came to visit while Coppola was shooting at Versailles, and remembered how cool Coppola was under such pressure. “We went out into the hall of mirrors, and you had 400 extras, and they were practicing the dance scene,” Sui recalled. “We finally found you, and you were sitting, and you had the monitor in your lap and they were practicing, and all you wanted to do was gossip.” Sui obliged, filling Coppola in on the goings-on back in the States, “and then I started looking at the monitor, and I said, ‘Sofia, you’d better look at this, you’ve got some important things going on!”
“I had this huge team, and I was happy to have a break where I could have friends visit,” Coppola shrugged, explaining that she had even put some visitors into make-up and costume, and making them extras in the film. “It’s a nice souvenir. My dad started doing that, of putting us in movies, and inviting friends to the set.”
Coppola confessed that the MAD screening was her first time seeing the film since it was released, which was some time ago: “When it came out I was pregnant with my daughter Romy – who’s the 13-year-old over there.” She seemed proud of her work, though a handful of scenes still bothered her. “When all the ministers were talking about, like, political… war parts, that’s not the area that interests me,” she laughed. “But I wanted to have a little bit, I have to tell some history, explain the plot, but plot is not my thing. So I call those the ‘Star Wars‘ scenes… I was not in my element, I’m self-conscious of those.”
And how did French audiences feel about the film? “I don’t think they were that pleased, before or after,” she laughed. “I remember, I had a meeting with Alain Delon about playing the king and he was like, How can you come from California and think you can make this? But I was kind of doing it in the spirit of Marie Antoinette, I felt. I knew it was a little bit obnoxious to be from California, coming to France, making a movie about Marie Antoinette. But I felt like it was sort of in a punk spirit that she would’ve appreciated.”
Photo by Jason Bailey.
