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Oct. 25th, 2006 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
molly_oHere's a tip: Never comment in someone else's blog that you rarely have problems with insomnia, because within 48 hours you will spend the night tossing and turning and kicking the covers.
Also, we saw Marie Antoinette last night. All the reviews talk about the scene where she's shoe-shopping to Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy," and somehow I got the impression it would be like "A Knight's Tale" -- or maybe more like Baz Luhrman's "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." I hoped for lots of wacky anachronism serving a larger truth -- instead of which, I got Masterpiece Theater with a better soundtrack.
The best soundtrack moment for me was not the Bob Wow Wow montage, but the Adam Ant tune when Marie hooks up with Axel Fersen -- because in the period costume, the character could've been straight off a Prince Charming-era Adam Ant album cover, just add a lot of eyeliner and a white stripe across the bridge of his nose. (Oh, and speaking of her affair with Axel Fersen, if you have to marry an autocrat who squanders his country's resources on personal luxury, I recommend Louis XVI over Idi Amin. I'm just saying.)
The movie was just really frustrating -- the costumes were good, and the scenery was great, and the acting was mostly good (the notable exception being Jason Schwartzman -- his Louis XVI was completely inscrutable), but the whole movie was very *flat*. It didn't have any kind of narrative energy or arc, things just *happened*. And I can respect that as an artistic approach, and I can see how, with a biography in particular, that would seem like a good way to acknowledge that it's not a fictional plot, it's someone's *life*.
But you know, it's just not fun to watch. I've actually never seen a Sofia Coppola movie before, maybe that's just how she directs (in which case, not seeing a Sofia Coppola movie again, sorry). I really *wanted* to like it, but much of the time I was *bored*. And I had this nagging feeling that all those same scenes, edited together differently, would've been really compelling.
Also, we saw Marie Antoinette last night. All the reviews talk about the scene where she's shoe-shopping to Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy," and somehow I got the impression it would be like "A Knight's Tale" -- or maybe more like Baz Luhrman's "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." I hoped for lots of wacky anachronism serving a larger truth -- instead of which, I got Masterpiece Theater with a better soundtrack.
The best soundtrack moment for me was not the Bob Wow Wow montage, but the Adam Ant tune when Marie hooks up with Axel Fersen -- because in the period costume, the character could've been straight off a Prince Charming-era Adam Ant album cover, just add a lot of eyeliner and a white stripe across the bridge of his nose. (Oh, and speaking of her affair with Axel Fersen, if you have to marry an autocrat who squanders his country's resources on personal luxury, I recommend Louis XVI over Idi Amin. I'm just saying.)
The movie was just really frustrating -- the costumes were good, and the scenery was great, and the acting was mostly good (the notable exception being Jason Schwartzman -- his Louis XVI was completely inscrutable), but the whole movie was very *flat*. It didn't have any kind of narrative energy or arc, things just *happened*. And I can respect that as an artistic approach, and I can see how, with a biography in particular, that would seem like a good way to acknowledge that it's not a fictional plot, it's someone's *life*.
But you know, it's just not fun to watch. I've actually never seen a Sofia Coppola movie before, maybe that's just how she directs (in which case, not seeing a Sofia Coppola movie again, sorry). I really *wanted* to like it, but much of the time I was *bored*. And I had this nagging feeling that all those same scenes, edited together differently, would've been really compelling.