A recurring scene in "Marie Antoinette" shows the young princess (or "Dauphine" as she was referred to in the Versailles Court) with her head leaning against the window of her carriage, looking out at the passing scenery, or craning her neck to look at the sky. She doesn't speak, and the soundtrack is muted to emphasize the creak of the wheels and the crunch of gravel under the horses' hooves. In a way, this was the life of Marie Antoinette; though she had almost unlimited resources at her disposal, she had no control or power over her own life. Destiny, politics, or some authority figure was always putting her in a carriage and taking her away to some unknown destination. The most she could do was to look out the window and let her thoughts wander.
"Marie Antoinette," based on Lady Antonia Fraser's brilliant biography, "Marie Antoinette: The Journey," is Sofia Coppola's third feature and her most ambitious yet. But underneath the trappings (and what elaborate, outrageously gorgeous trappings by Milena Canonero, to the tune of Manholo Blanik mules and the ceaseless rustle of taffeta and organza) the underlying message remains the same: Coppola has always strived to tell the world what it's like to be a girl -- someone's daughter, sister, object of desire, struggling to come into her own but at the same time fighting to keep her girl-status intact, to explain that brief, irritable and fascinating time in a woman's life known as girlhood. Five teenage sisters die to preserve it in "Virgin Suicides." A girl-wife uses it to instigate a platonic love affair with an older man in "Lost in Translation." And now, in "Marie Antoinette," GIRL is deployed as the defining factor of the persona of one of the world's most famous queens.
Through Marie, Coppola explores what it is to be a girl, not just any girl, but a privileged, sheltered and celebrated one. The movie is not only a tribute to the queen, but also a sorority call to poor little rich girls everywhere: "Look, here we are!" (Albeit in a girlish whisper, not a feminist battle cry.).