Film Fatale: Marie Antoinette, Lick the Star and the Visual Language of Sofia Coppola
A Sofia Coppola resurgence has arrived. Although she has always been a staple of girlhood in film and has thrived on the internet through girlbloggers and Letterboxd lurkers, it seems like only now are we seeing the true, widespread appreciation for her hazy teen dream features. With the recent Uniqlo x Sofia Coppola collab (that I absolutely bought) and the viral TikTok of her daughter making vodka pasta whilst she’s grounded being briefly listed on Letterboxd, a film rating site, it makes absolute sense to bask in the soft feminine and nostalgic lens of her filmography all over again.
Marie Antionette (2006) is a story that reimagines the idea of girlhood, youth and the awkwardness of growing up into a setting you wouldn't expect. Suburban streets and American highschools come to mind when thinking of these themes in film, almost exactly like The Virgin Suicides (1999), but seeing this type of story placed in a historical, fantasy-like setting gives it a warming quality. It makes you consider how the duality of innocence and confusion surrounding growing up has always existed, even though it is only in the last century that we begin to see ‘teenagers’ as a stage of life separate from childhood and adulthood.
The expectation to grow up so fast is daunting. It wasn’t really until the release of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) starring James Dean, where American culture decided to accept that the in-between state of childhood and adulthood as something that needs its own space and own definition. Nevertheless, Marie would have still been faced with the typical hormone changes and a shifting sense of self that comes with these crucial years of adolescence, all whilst occupying a crucial, public role for France. Coppola embraces this, and creates room for Marie to be a girl. It’s nice to feel like you can relate to even the last queen of France; that girlhood, the beauty of female friendship and the pain of growth is universal.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Coppola manages to create a cinematic world that is so clearly through the eyes of a woman, the camera never lingers, we never feel a hatred towards Antoinette’s shopping, eating, and sleeping: Instead it’s completely romanticised. We’re invited to sleep in and eat strawberries with her, a beautiful luxury most of us can only dream of. This overt display of wealth and a way of life that is teetering on hedonism could be so easily villanised, and it rightfully was, hence the French Revolution. Would I also have joined in with the take-down of the extremely wealthy and flashy monarchy whilst the citizens struggled to simply live in 1700’s France? Of course. But this wasn’t really Marie’s fault, as we now know, she was merely a teenager who didn’t know much better. Coppola gives this iconic historical figure a new light, tapping into her audience’s deep connection with on-screen depictions of being a teenage girl that not many other filmmakers bother with, or at least do completely wrong.
The scenes which really stood out to me were where Marie (played by Kirsten Dunst) explored the garden with her daughter and friends, their dialogue fades out slightly and we hear the details of dresses gliding through long grass, birds singing and distant laughs as they drink fresh milk and lay on flowers.
The camera handheld, the beams of sunlight drift in and out as we move with Marie through the blooming nature that we can only reach through film for many of us. Marie reads: “Rousseau says: If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilisation, what is the natural state? The state of nature from which he has been removed? Imagine wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.” Coppola shows Marie in an intelligent, introspective light, whilst also maintaining her love for shopping, gambling, and excess that was so frowned upon. It’s interesting to consider if Coppola related to Marie in this way, coming from affluence and having an audience looking on to her life and thinking ‘she’s the daughter of the biggest director in the world, what will she do?’ Meeting the expectations of her last name and navigating which of the many routes she could take in her career is a unique experience, but one she translates for the screen well, causing the audience to empathise with protagonists far removed from their reality.
The nepo baby discourse that has blown up in the past year is completely justified - but could Coppola’s filmmaking language thrive in such a mainstream way without the push of her father being the director of The Godfather? Coppola is absolutely a talented filmmaker in her own right, but it’s difficult to imagine her films surrounding the small details of girlhood given a large platform and a large budget if she was any other budding filmmaker. I’m grateful Coppola used her nepotism in this way, she doesn't try to tell stories she doesn’t know - instead she magnifies qualities of many teenage girl’s lives, such as romantic connection, sadness, and confusion, and gives them the platform we have always been yearning for, as well as a staple visual language of messy bedside tables, unmade beds and meadows at sunrise.
“Coppola brings us back to our first moments of these feelings we can remember, in school hallways and staring out your bedroom window, confronted with gossip, saying child-like things in adult-like situations, and the unique world you create in your head to cope.”
Kirsten Dunst is a recurring star of Coppola’s films, The Virgin Suicides (1999), The Beguiled (2017), Marie Antoinette (2006), and a fourth wall breaking cameo in The Bling Ring (2013). Her presence is just as important as any other visual staple of her films. Dunst has an introspective innocence whilst simultaneously seeming more wise than your average middle-class 16 year old we’re used to seeing on screen. She has the ability to both represent a teenage girl in a way we can recognise whilst also offering up a more genuine, multilayered character without the use of unrealistic dialogue. Dunst simply gazing out the window, whether it’s a car or a carriage, is enough to translate that universal feeling of being a teenage girl trying to figure it all out.
As Dunst states in an interview with The Gentlewoman: “What Sofia liked about me then were things that I didn’t even know would give me confidence in later life.” She continues, “She loved my crooked teeth.” It sounds like both the cinematic world Coppola created and the on-set relationships is one that is safe, gentle and fulfilling.
Coppola’s first short film Lick The Star (1988) shows a natural dedication to these types of stories: It’s almost like an earlier The Virgin Suicides. Depicting the struggles of depression and social rejection in a high school setting is sometimes the only way to really get in touch with these types of themes, reminding us of our first raw experiences with them. We are constantly being desensitised through extremely dramatic and at times gruesome stories of mental illness and suicide, mainstream films making it seem like these illnesses and situations have a clear beginning and end, that every person going through something will have their moment of realisation. Coppola brings us back to our first moments of these feelings we can remember, in school hallways and staring out your bedroom window, confronted with gossip, saying child-like things in adult-like situations, and the unique world you create in your head to cope.
Although definitely not the most inclusive - being stories on only middle-class white teenage girls - I feel like Coppola used her incredible ties to Hollywood and the film industry to help pave the way for an acceptance of not just women-led films, but films that embrace the feeling of girlhood, youth and allowing the teenage girl to be multidimensional.
Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
