La Décadence Part One

It's time to move away from emotional love letters to my friends and family to what you're all here for -- juicy stories. Any time you study French culture, you're going to run into France's dirty laundry, so today is your lucky day if you're into France's decadent past and its revolutionary history.

For Christmas, I asked for and received a favorite movie, Marie Antoinette, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role. Based loosely on Antonia Fraser's biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, the movie is a luscious look at the child queen's reign and downward spiral toward her death. The stylized scenes -- shoes, food, clothing -- are mouthwatering and I loved the modern score underlying all of the period costuming and scenery. It got mixed reviews, but I've always liked Sofia Coppola's sympathetic portrait of Marie Antoinette as an innocent pawn. Kirsten Dunst is luminous as Antoinette and is a believable virgin queen who waited seven anxious years for her marriage to be consummated. As I'm sure you are all aware, poor Marie Antoinette's story ends with the beheading of Louis XVI, followed by her execution nine months later. The tragic story continued with the imprisonment, abuse, and eventual death of their third child, Louis-Charles, who should have succeeded his father to the throne. There were many pretenders to his title, but modern-day science has proven that none of the claimants had Louis and Marie's DNA and it is now assumed that Louis XVII died in June of 1795 as was claimed at the time. The movie, however, leaves the viewer in the carriage with Louis and Marie as they leave Versailles for the last time under armed guard and does not force us to witness the violent last months of their lives. If you love costume dramas with a twist, you'll love Marie Antoinette as much as I do.

Every time I write a post, I get distracted by the researching and historical facts that I uncover. This time, I discovered that Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun became Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's court painter and was the most famous female painter of the eighteenth century. Over a six year period, she completed thirty paintings of the queen and her family, including the infamous "muslin dress" painting. Completed and exhibited in the 1786 Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) Salon, Marie Antoinette was shown wearing a straw hat and a white muslin dress with tight pleated sleeves. The Queen was becoming more unpopular by the minute, and critics said that she had portrayed herself in a totally inappropriate blouse. Coppola clearly channeled Le Brun's painting when creating her version of Antoinette's clothing when she was living informally at the Petit Trianon with her cronies.

Marie Antoinette appears to have been a silly young girl who became a loyal spouse and a loving mother. I found this Le Brun painting of the Queen and her children, which also appears in the movie, to be very poignant. Marie Antoinette is shown with her three children, Marie Thérèse, Louis Charles, and Louis Joseph. The empty cradle recalls one-year-old Marie Sophie who died of tuberculosis. One year after the painting was finished in 1787, Louis Joseph died too, and the Queen had the painting moved because every time she passed it it made her cry. The painting was exhibited in the Salon of 1788 and was the last of the thirty Le Brun portraits of the Queen and her family. She was criticized for her choice of the elegant red velvet dress and for posing in the royal Mirror Gallery at Versailles, an inflammatory choice given the unrest brewing in France at the time.

I've always felt sorry for Marie Antoinette; she just couldn't catch a break from anyone. Although this movie shows us in living color why the French people became so disillusioned with their royals, its lavish spectacles are a treat for the eyes. Next time, I'll give you a taste of another period movie that isn't quite so kind...