Marie Antoinette
After a brief fling as an actress, cinema writer and director
Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Ford Coppola) wisely chose
a career behind the camera. Her debut feature film, ‘The
Virgin Suicides’, was a light-weight youth orientated
comedy that quickly disappeared, but it was good enough to
cut her teeth on. Next came the low-budget hit ‘Lost
in Translation’. Loosely based on Sofia’s own
experiences, the film did much to restore the career of Bill
Murray, and catapult Scarlett Johansson into ‘star’
status. The movie also did a lot for Sofia’s own career,
for suddenly she was a director of ‘interest’.
Now comes her first mainstream big-budget feature film, and
it is a formidable success. ‘Marie Antoinette’
places Sofia Coppola in the ranks of ‘Very Important
Director’, and her future films will be seriously assessed.
Working from a novel, by gifted ‘feminist’ writer
Antonia Fraser, Coppola creates a sumptuous historical drama
with a contemporary cutting edge. The film attempts to place
the life of the ‘decadent’ French Queen into a
modern day feminist appraisal. Using contemporary language
and a contemporary cinema style, the movie superbly achieves
its goal of restoring Marie Antoinette’s somewhat tarnished
reputation. Much of the success of the film should be acknowledged
as the work of actress Kirsten Dunst. In the title role, Dunst
takes us from the naïve young Austrian Archduchess, ill
equipped to handle the intrigues of the French court, through
the turmoil of her unsuccessful marriage with the French Dauphin,
and, finally, to some sort of reconciliation as Queen and
Mother. Unfortunately, just as Marie Antoinette is achieving
some semblance of happiness, along comes the French Revolution
to throw a spanner into the works. Kirsten Dunst beautifully
controls these character developments, and she creates a Marie
Antoinette that is charming, sexy, and intelligent. Her performance
is very touching, and we feel much sympathy for the woman
she creates. Coppola also ends the movie on an upbeat, creating
a ‘happy ending’, which spares us the excesses
of the Revolution, and Marie Antoinette’s eventual fate.
It is a shrewd decision, for Coppola and Dunst have created
a very memorable character that does not deserve to die. To
hell with history! Sofia Coppola has made a lush and lavish
movie that is entirely enthralling. Sofia Coppola is no longer
daddy’s little girl, and she has to be taken very seriously
indeed.
Flyboys
Recently, when I was checking out the shelves in my local
DVD store, the lad that manages the shop kept urging me to
buy ‘Flyboys’. “Take it, Mr. Robet”,
he kept insisting, “it is really good”! Well,
as there was nothing much else on offer that looked appealing,
I thought I would give it a go. Surprisingly enough, Wayan
seemed to know what he was talking about, for the movie was
actually rather good. Okay, the story is pretty dumb, but,
this is one of those movies that aren’t all about plot.
For various reasons a group of young American chaps go to
France, towards the end of World War I, to join the Lafayette
Escadrille. There, they train as pilots and are quickly sent
off to kill the ‘Evil Hun’ in a series of daring
aerial dog-fights. I don’t know what were computer-animations,
what were models, or what were ‘real’ antique
airplanes, and pretty soon I gave up trying to figure it out,
as these dog-fights were some of the most spectacular and
breathtaking aerial cinema sequences that I have seen in a
long, long time. Naturally enough, there is a romantic sub-plot,
concerning one of the handsome pilots and a beautiful French
peasant girl, but, this hardly gets in the way of the war,
and it gives you plenty of time to make revitalizing Gin and
Tonics without loosing any of the action. The film stars a
group of new fresh-faced young actors, some of which have
‘star quality’ written all over them, and they
try their hardest to please. Director Tony Bill puts the whole
thing together with a certain amount of style and panache,
and the cinema-photography by Henry Braham is absolutely superb.
Alright, the movie is a bit dull when it is land bound, but,
when the dashing ‘Flyboys’ take to the sky, then
the movie really soars.
A Good Year
American director Ridley Scott is best known for his hard-edged,
aggressive, movies such as ‘Alien’, ‘Blade
Runner’, ‘Thelma and Louise’, ‘Gladiator’
and ‘Black Hawk Down’. Therefore, it comes as
a change of pace, and somewhat of a surprise, that his latest
work, ‘A Good Year’, is a piece of romantic fluff.
Maybe he was intrigued by the genre, and wanted to have a
go at it. Maybe it was a deal he couldn’t renege on.
Who knows just what the machinations of big-time movie-making
are, and how a director can finish up in a project for which
he is entirely unsuited. This twaddle tells the story of a
ruthless London stockbroker who inherits a vineyard in the
South of France, and when he visits the estate, with the intention
of selling it, memories of a golden youth spent there come
to haunt him, and thus affect his decisions. All of this is
very nice, and Ridley Scott displays a sure touch when handling
breezy comedy, but, what is annoying about the film is that
Scott hints at deeper mysteries connected with the vineyard,
which are then not followed through. The movie could have
been so much better if Ridley Scott got over his fascination
with provincial French life, and concentrated on the job at
hand. Also, Russell Crowe is not a dapper British businessman.
His accent, and his performance, comes across like a New Zealand
sheep farmer rather than a London City ‘Shark’.
File the film as forgettable, and hope that Ridley Scott will
be back in his familiar form with the next one.
The Oh in Ohio
It appears that Liza Minnelli had about one day’s work
in her cameo-role as a sex therapist in this appalling movie,
‘The Oh in Ohio’, directed by Billy Kent. Parker
Posey plays a frigid wife who falls in love with her vibrator.
Paul Rudd is her frustrated husband. Words cannot describe
how crass the movie is, so I am not going to try. It is not
worth it just to see Liza, who is fat, again, and blonde,
and it doesn’t suit her. Alas, Liza is living Judy’s
life.
