THE BEGUILED Marks a Return To Form

(Don’t do it, Ryan.)

(I’m not joking. It’s hacky. It’s corny to the point that you trying to couch it by first writing a cute couple of lines acknowledging what you’re about to do is also hacky. It might actually be worse.)

(Sigh….)

Webster’s Dictionary defines “beguile” as “to deceive by wiles”, “to lead by deception", quite literally “hoodwink”. It follows, then, that to be beguiled means to be hoodwinked, to be deceived by false appearance.

THE BEGUILED, then, is a movie title that gives you a sense of the entire story before a frame has run through the projector (I’m not sure film really works like that, anymore, but…you get the imagery). Sofia Coppola’s sixth film, which both reunites her with a couple of her former leads AND allows her to collaborate with two modern powerhouses for the first time, deals directly with what happens when a deceiver enters a space of isolation through cowardly means and begins to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting.

It’s also a period piece, a suspense tale set in the American South smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, a time when pretty much everybody walked around with a significant amount of tension, distrust, and anxiety at all times. One could also make the argument that Coppola is dabbling in allegorical story-telling; many of the images and blocking in this movie seems drenched in double-meanings (there’s a lot of tilling of soil, much pruning of branches).

More than anything else, though, THE BEGUILED marks both a relieving return to form for Coppola after a confusing mini-disaster in THE BLING RING, while still representing something different altogether from her. Even if it doesn’t always work 100% of the time, it all at least hangs together. This is a victory in and of itself.

THE BEGUILED (2017)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Coppola

Released: June 23, 2017

Length: 97 minutes

Based off a 1966 Thomas P. Cullinan novel of the same name, and previously made as a 1971 Don Siegel movie starring Clint Eastwood, THE BEGUILED tells the story of a sparsely populated Virginian girls’ school in 1864, ran by Martha Farnsworth (Kidman) and staffed by just one other adult, Edwina Morrow (Dunst). As Edwina teaches the five students French, the Civil War rages ever on in the background.

One fateful morning, one of Edwina’s young students, Amy (Oona Laurence), makes an odd discovery while picking mushrooms: a wounded Union deserter, Corporal John McBurney (Farrell). After some debate whether to turn or take him in, Martha allows McBurney inside the school in order to rest and recuperate. This decision ultimately comes at a cost, as McBurney starts slowly and methodically seducing each of the girls, as he shows a talent for showing only the parts of himself he thinks the woman in front of him needs to see (psychologically speaking, not physically. It’s not that kind of movie).

His charm turns to violence as he gets busted sleeping with teenage Alicia (Fanning) by Edwina, whom he had previously declared his love to. Edwina responds by pushing him down a flight of stairs, which wounds his leg to the point of amputation (whether this amputation is truly medically necessary, or merely an act of revenge is a deliberately unanswered point of contention). He’s furious, the women are trapped, and the story shifts to one about how one removes the wolf from the hen house.

In many ways, THE BEGUILED almost plays like a Best Of Sofia Coppola movie, with elements of her past films all mixed together to create something new. There’s Kirsten Dunst! There’s Elle Fanning! There’s that palpable PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK aesthetic and tension at play again! Oh, is that the French language I hear?

And yet, many pillars and tenets of what a typical Sofia Coppola movie looks like is almost entirely absent here. No longing, colorful, fast-paced looks at wealth here. In fact, THE BEGUILED is almost entirely shrouded in darkness in its key moments (a decision that I have mixed feelings about, more on that in a second!). Even though it clocks in at her typical 90 or so minutes, its pace is quite intentionally slow and methodical.

Yet many of her themes remain. Loneliness. The want for freedom. The repression of desire. And perhaps no single character best exemplifies those classic Coppola themes than Edwina, the schoolteacher. All of the girls at the school develop feelings of some sort for McBurney, but Edwina is the one who most obviously falls in love with him. She’s a woman who’s lost in her current role, with no real future ahead of her. War surrounds her. She’s just a schoolteacher, and that’s all she’ll ever be. Then comes this handsome, somewhat dangerous Corporal. Even though it’s clear he’s writing her a check he has no intention of cashing, a large part of her wants to believe it. She has to; it’s her only chance at another kind of life.

This isn’t my original observation, and I do not remember exactly where I first saw it, but it’s worth aggregating it anyway; THE BEGUILED completes the Sofia Coppola Trilogy of Movies Where Kirsten Dunst Plays A Character Who’s Trapped In A Social System With No Easy Way Out Of It (the first two, of course, being THE VIRGIN SUICIDES and MARIE ANTOINETTE). Here, it might be that archetype at its most heartbreaking. She wants so badly, maybe more than any of the other women at the school, to believe McBurney and his seductions. Even to the very end, as McBurney’s deadly dinner begins, it’s not clear to us as an audience if she’s going to actually eat the poison mushrooms and die alongside him (whether she does or not, I’ll leave for you to experience).

It shouldn’t be surprising that Coppola keeps going back to Dunst for these kind of roles. She’s good at them. Dunst is really, really skilled at communicating heartbreak and desire non-verbally and always has been (she’s a big reason those Raimi SPIDER-MAN movies have the emotional punch that they do), which makes her a valuable tool in Coppola’s workbox. We’ve actually reached the end of their collaborations, at least as of this writing (Dunst isn’t in ON THE ROCKS or the upcoming PRISCILLA). One has to imagine there’s more to come on that front. One day.

Another pleasant standout is our sole male lead, Colin Farrell.

Farrell is a guy whose presence has been interesting to grow up around. I distinctly remember that period in the 2000’s where it felt like he was everywhere. As a young man, he had a knack for picking the exact right, fun project (MINORITY REPORT, MIAMI VICE, IN BRUGES) except for when he didn’t (PHONE BOOTH and DAREDEVIL to pick just a couple). He also had a very distinct bad boy reputation, and was at the center of one of the only entertaining and interesting moments in Jay Leno’s TONIGHT SHOW tenure (naturally, it never aired). And now, here he is at the age of 41 (at least at the time THE BEGUILED was released), and all of a sudden a different kind of guy has emerged. Farrell is now a man who connotes danger without living it, a man with that great combination of handsome and seasoned.

All of that to say that, as far as the only main male role in the entire film, Colin Farrell is the exact right fucking choice in 2017 for Corporal McBurney, a man who has to be both many things to many people AND ultimately a man only interested in himself. It’s a tough role to play, but Farrell is maybe one of the only leading men in his current age bracket that could pull it off. It requires a guy who can be charming in an understated way; McBurney is never a “light up the room the second he enters it” kind of man. He’s more of a “slowly nestle his way into your soul” kind of man. Yet, he also needs to be able to provide that believable rage when pushed and cornered. Near the end, McBurney starts dipping into horror movie villain territory, ranting and raving and carrying on while our core women leads are locked in a room, waiting for the tempest to pass.

You basically need to both believe him when he’s charming AND when he’s insane. With age on his side, Farrell’s the guy. We’re lucky to have him.

———

On the matter of how the movie is shot and its relationship with literal darkness, I can’t decide if it’s an exercise of form over function. Yes, it makes a lot of sense that the movie would be only lightly lit. The symbolism of the house being covered in shadow once McBurney enters it (as well as the follow-through in thought of key exterior shots being shot through the leaves of a tree) is clear and easy to track. And, of course, the dinner scenes lit only by candlelight evokes a technique mastered by Stanley Kubrick 40 years prior.

On the other hand….well, the movie is hard to see! I know it sounds stupid, but that matters! To be perfectly honest, THE BEGUILED is on Netflix as I write this, and it’s how I screened it for myself. I was ready to blame my visual issues on a touched-up streaming upload or something, so I was somewhat relieved to hear that one of the top Google results for “THE BEGUILED” is “Why is THE BEGUILED filmed so dark?”. For a movie that rests a lot of its storytelling on quiet moments, glances, and facial expressions…bust out a couple more candles, that’s all I’m saying.

(Note: this could be all the result of some setting on my screen that I’m overlooking. Let me know if you had this issue when you watched it, too.)

———

Something I’ve been avoiding mentioning this entire article, minus a brief mention near its beginning, is the 1971 version of this same story which, again, starred Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page in the Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman roles, respectively. Normally, whenever there’s a prior version of a movie I’m reviewing, I have no problem comparing them directly. For instance, 1991’s CAPE FEAR is a direct remake of the 60’s original; therefore, it seems fair to be able to view them side-by-side and judge them accordingly.

Here, though, up until the very last minute, I hadn’t even watched Siegel’s version of the Cullinan novel because Coppola isn’t technically remaking his movie. She’s just taking another crack at the same source material. So it didn’t seem fair to compare them. Yet….curiosity got the better of me and I ultimately fit in an opportunity to sneak in a viewing (one of the big reasons this article is coming out a day late).

And…well, I liked it better.

It’s not an overwhelming victory or anything, and it doesn’t necessarily invalidate Coppola’s vision; a lot of the differences between the two simply come down to style choices. The story remains largely the same. However, there are some notable departures that Coppola takes that gives one pause (although I think they’re slightly defendable).

The first thing to point out is that there’s a female slave character, Millie, in the 1971 BEGUILED that Coppola excised completely from the 2017 version. This doesn’t exactly help her beat the allegations that she tells stories from a strictly white (and privileged) perspective, something that has plagued her since the LOST IN TRANSLATION controversy. On one hand, it’s a shame; Mae Mercer brings a lot of humanity to the role (she actually gets one my favorite lines and moments in the whole thing; “You better like it with a died black woman. Because, that's the only way you'll get it from this one”), and I think bringing race in as a component adds even more dis-ease to the story, especially considering it’s a Civl War tale set in the South (with its villain a coward Union soldier). On the other, I think it’s reasonable to assume Coppola simply didn’t think she had anything to provide to the race angle and thought better to avoid it altogether (and considering the tense implications of Millie’s presence in the story, something that could have gone even worse for Coppola if she had bungled it).

All things being equal, it would be nice if Sofia Coppola had some deep insight to provide in regards to race. But she doesn’t. If she did, she would have done so by now. Thus, it doesn’t seem like the scathing indictment people think it is to continue to point out that “she only tells stories about white people!”. I think she knows. Frankly, it’s part of her style at this point. Anyone continuing to watch her movies looking for that kind of insight, when there are twenty-plus other directors that can, feels like torturing yourself on purpose. It’s what it is.

The second, and bigger in my opinion, is that the 2017 BEGUILED frames the story from the perspective of the women. This wouldn’t seem to be a huge deal; after all, there’s only one man in the whole movie (more or less). The thing is, though, that I think Corporal McBurney might be the most compelling character in the whole thing (save for arguably Edwina). Yes, the women are the ones who are changed from the experience, so it would make sense to put the dramatic focus on them. But, when you have such a bizarre and dark central character provided to you, sometimes you gotta roll with it. Focusing on McBurney and his headspace is a large reason why Siegel’s version has such an offbeat and unforgettable vibe (well, that and the incest subplot….it sort of makes sense in context….you should just watch it.) Coppola’s version lacks a punch by comparison.

(Also, it doesn’t do the 2017 version any favors that Geraldine Page blows Nicole Kidman out of the water in terms of performances. I hadn’t brought up the Coppola version’s biggest star yet up for a reason, and it’s because Kidman made no impression on me whatsoever. Considering she used to be one of the most compelling leading women we had, this was rattling for me.)

AND YET. Unlike THE BLING RING, THE BEGUILED has ideas and a point of view and a palpable artistic vision. This was a relief to me, because Sofia Coppola obviously means something to me. I wouldn’t have dedicated my summer to her movies and inspirations if she didn’t! It sucked to see her take such an artless turn seemingly out of nowhere. If nothing else, THE BEGUILED at least showed me that she hadn’t lost it.

But, you know….you should watch both versions. Just because.

Sofia Coppola and The (Possible) Reclamation of MARIE ANTOINETTE

MARIE ANTOINETTE has had a really fascinating lifecycle of discourse.

The movie, I mean. Not the person.

Well, maybe the person, too.

Anyway.

I remember pretty acutely that Sofia Coppola’s third feature and follow-up to LOST IN TRANSLATION, the film that won her a screenwriting Oscar, was fairly polarizing at the time of its release. The written record seems to back this memory up; it currently has a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (not that the famous aggregator site has ever been a real reflection on a movie’s true qualities), and a review of some Wikipedia snippets confirm some critics at the time really loved it, while others….really didn’t.

General audiences didn’t seem particularly high on it either. Its CinemaScore landed right in the middle, at a C*. It made its $40 million budget back, but just barely: it made $60 million worldwide, which admittedly isn’t exactly nothing. Still, LOST IN TRANSLATION made $118 million worldwide off a $4 million budget, so MARIE ANTOINETTE’s relative failure must have given producers pause.

*Although, again, a CinemaScore is really only a measure of how much fun a given average audience just had, period. Consider that EYES WIDE SHUT received a D- CinemaScore, BOOGIE NIGHTS a C, while Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOR received an A. Simply put, who gives a shit about CinemaScore?

Is any of this fair? Maybe, maybe not. All I can tell you is that, for as obsessed with LOST IN TRANSLATION I was as a lad (and, boy howdy was I), I was a little disappointed by her choice in direction for her next film. Marie Antoinette was not a historical figure I was all that interested in (I was admittedly an uncurious teenager in many ways), and the prominent usage of modern music in the trailers made me hesitate. It all felt…surface level somehow. Immature. To that end, I didn’t even see it, something that would have seemed unfathomable to me in 2004 or so.

It didn’t help that I had friends at the time who also rolled their eyes every time the movie came up in conversation. People definitely had feelings about it, although the sands of time prevent me from recalling exactly what they were, or why they were felt. But the facts were, nobody I knew really wanted to see it, I certainly wasn’t going to see it by myself, and I barely wanted to buy a ticket in the first place. So that was that.

And yet! Here in 2023, I have now seen MARIE ANTOINETTE. Furthermore, a quick scan through Letterboxd (which, because I actively use it, is in fact a completely objective way of deciding a movie’s value and worth) shows that there are many, many, many people out there who quite adore this Kirsten Dunst historical vehicle! My rushed math suggests the aggregate rating for MARIE ANTOINETTE amongst my friends is an easy four stars out of five. A reclamation appears to be at hand.

So, now having finally seen it for the first time, over sixteen years from its release, what did I think? Well, I liked it way, way, way more than I would have ever expected. Yet, it’s the first Sofia Coppola movie out of her first four (a de-facto spoiler for next week’s article, I guess) that I didn’t exactly love. This means I now have to use this space to figure out precisely why.

So…let’s find out!

MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rose Byrne, Judy Davis, Rip Torn

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: October 20, 2006

Length: 123 minutes

MARIE ANTOINETTE tells the story of…well, Marie Antoinette (Dunst), an Austrian teenager who, in 1770, becomes betrothed to the Dauphin of France (Schwartzman) in an attempt to form an alliance between the two countries. As most of you are aware, Antoinette will become the future Queen of France. As history will turn out, she will also become the final one, as the French Revolution continues to foment in the background of her rule before finally consuming the country and the monarchy by the 1780’s.

Coppola’s film, based off Antonia Fraser’s biography MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY, frames Antoinette as somewhat of a tragic figure, a young girl who gets married into a life of luxury and power essentially against her will, then gets swept up in the excesses afforded a woman of her stature before getting executed by the masses at the ripe old age of 37.

Whether this is a fair depiction of Antoinette is up for debate, to say the least (and probably depends on the individual). For what it’s worth, it’s probably not a discussion I’d be able to have with much clarity, given that I’m not as studied on her as a figure as many others. What I could purport to know about her are items that basically come down to legend, with the “let them eat cake” quote looming largest.

It’s easily the most well-known thing about Marie Antoinette’s short but infamous life, the ultimate “too wealthy elitist leader who is completely out of touch with the common man”, a response to the information that the peasants had run out of bread.

Naturally, she almost certainly didn’t actually say it.

The primary evidence against the claim is the fact that the quote was coined in 1765 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his autobiography CONFESSIONS, when Antoinette was only nine years old and hadn’t yet left her native Austria. Even in that context, it’s hard to tell whether Rousseau’s tale that spurned the phrase was itself truthful (he attributed the “let them eat cake” to simply an unnamed “great princess”). It’s equally unclear how exactly the quote got attached to Antoinette in the first place. But, in the decades after her reign, it certainly felt like something she could have said. So if pro-revolutionaries recognized the symbolic power of the phrase implied as such, what’s the harm?

Thus an entire legacy is altered permanently in culture.

So, I ask: if the “let them eat cake” quote turned out to not be anything I can attribute to her, what else do we think we “know” about Marie Antoinette?

This is the same question that MARIE ANTOINETTE has on its mind as well, and it’s probably the best prism with which to view Coppola’s film here, although it’s also what I think ultimately ruffled some feathers. The movie’s distinctive feature is its committal to depicting Marie Antoinette not necessarily as an out-of-touch member of the ruling class, but as an outsider trying her best. This runs somewhat counter to our popular understanding of her and, thus, has the vague cadence of someone stirring the pot*.

(* It should be noted that the 2001 biography Coppola’s script is technically based off of, Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey is also known for being a quite balanced and sympathetic account of her life, although it should also be noted that I have not read it.)

MARIE ANTOINETTE would seem to be an even more controversial watch in 2023, when “eat the rich” sentiment is, not unreasonably, at an all-time high. What is one to think now of a giant shopping scene set to “I Want Candy”? Couple all of that with the friendly reminder that this is a film birthed from a director who happens to be the child of one of the most well-regarded filmmakers of all time, a woman who for all intents and purposes was born on third base. Simply put, one may ask: why would I care about a rich, privileged woman’s sympathies for another rich, privileged woman?

So I get the instant hostility.

AND YET. I think it’s this marriage of creator and subject matter that gives MARIE ANTOINETTE its…something. Because what the movie seems to be about, more than class, more than French history, is about celebrity and what it means to be swept up in it, accept it, embrace it, then ultimately get destroyed by it.

A major aspect of the film are how concerned people are about Marie needing to be doing things “correctly”. She needs to act a certain way in public. Her marriage needs to be of a certain passion. She’s taking too long to provide the Dauphin a heir (her mother writes her letters on how to help things along in that regard). She’s inappropriately giving the cold shoulder to the current king’s mistress (Asia Argento). She needs to be comfortable in power, but shouldn’t enjoy it (In the film’s less subtle moments, Marie hears all the gossip directed at her as she walks through the halls of the Palace of Versailles). On and on it goes.

Her marriage is amiable, not unfulfilling. Her only role is to be by her side and be “perfect”. The only thing that allows her any sort of joy is partying and buying beautiful clothes. So, naturally, she gets advised by her own damn brother, The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Danny Huston), not to do that stuff anymore. Her lavish lifestyle coincides with a major financial crisis in France, which puts her in the crosshairs of the public. She eventually sires a son, the thing everyone wanted her to do, and settles down into a family role, but it’s too late. Louis XVI’s perceived indecisions and foppish leadership has doomed him, her and the monarchy as a whole.

Her public decides they’re done with her, and they kill her. They have their reasons, but then, everybody does.

If you separate Marie Antoinette from the context of European politics and put in a more modern context of a public figure, this all sounds familiar, right?

This is more or less how we expect our most notable personalities (usually performers and entertainers, although not always!) to conduct themselves. Women are either too fat or too skinny. Men are either total assholes or they’re little smol beans that must be protected. We demand unfettered access to their personal lives, only to turn around and mock them for being “sloppy”. And lest you ever feel bad for celebrities…well, that’s what the money’s for, right?

This is an intentional line Coppola is drawing, at least it seems to me. And I think that’s why MARIE ANTOINETTE is worth checking out at least once to see how it hits you.

And, I get it. How do you feel bad for the powerful, either onscreen or off? But I think Coppola is maybe one of the few who can find a path towards possibly getting someone to. Considering her entire formative years and beyond must have been populated with figures exactly like this, the influential, famous and beautiful who nevertheless have feelings, desires and anxieties…it doesn’t exactly surprise me that Coppola found this aspect of Antoinette completely compelling.

Kirsten Dunst is a good fit for Marie Antoinette in this regard, and it’s fun to see how much she’s grown, both as an individual and as a performer, since we last saw her in 1999’s THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. Between those two films, Dunst’s career had skyrocketed thanks to her costarring role as Mary Jane Watson in the first two Sam Raimi SPIDER-MAN films. She had also gained cool cult-film cred with 2000’s BRING IT ON and 2004’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

But I think it’s easy to forget how skilled a performer Dunst can really be. It helps that she’s able to pull off the glamour you imagine Antoinette to be associated with; she doesn’t exactly look like her, but she does feel like her, and maybe that’s all the difference. But, she plays the somewhat contradictory emotion of this somewhat lost and naive soul well. Every scene of her and Louis XVI trying to connect, trying to make something out of this arrangement they’ve been thrown into…it’s bittersweet and kind of heartbreaking. Crucially, when the movie reaches its inevitable conclusion, your heart sinks more than a little bit. I think this wouldn’t be the case if Dunst weren’t so compelling in the role, which makes her perhaps the most important piece of this film’s foundation.

We haven’t talked about him much, but by the way, Jason Schwartzman is phenomenal as Louis-Auguste, the Dauphin of France. In a bit of perhaps-unintentional meta-comedy, he’s a legacy hire, likely cast for his familial connection to Coppola (they’re cousins). But that would only be an issue if he weren’t as good in the role as he is. He fully realizes the Dauphin as a character, a boy given a man’s position that he is completely not ready for. As far as all that hand-wringing from the royal court that Marie cannot provide the country an heir? Yeah, turns out that’s more on the Dauphin than people want to admit.

Despite the lack of solid evidence that Louis XVI was in fact gay, it’s a rumor that has dogged him even to this day (possibly as a during-his-time explanation as to why they had such trouble consummating). The movie seems to at least flirt with this as a possibility, although it’s just as likely that Louis XVI was too young, too indecisive, too introverted, too unattracted to his assigned wife (he would have made an incredible Redditor).

Schwartzman plays this ambiguity perfectly. Whether or not he was a latent homosexual, or whether he was just a sweet weirdo under pressure, all that matters is that he’s a recipe for disaster, a heavily introverted leader who does as much to sour the people against the monarchy as Marie ever did. And, look, if you’re going for that kind of guy, there’s no reason to look further than Jason Schwartzman.

———

Interestingly, the aspect of the movie’s production that I thought for sure would drive me crazy was easily my favorite part about it, that being its modern soundtrack. I often find that using modern music or production aspects to gussy up an old story or period piece is a corny crutch that implies a distrust of a given audience’s interest in the very story it’s invested itself in.

Here, though, Coppola’s ear for the perfect “needle drop” comes through. Take the infamous use of The Strokes’ “What Ever Happened”; for whatever reason, more than any other song on the soundtrack, this gets singled out as something egregious. My first counterpoint is that the song rocks, so who cares. My second and more productive counterpoint, though, is that the song happens to sonically match the emotion of the moment in the film perfectly.

As a reminder, the song arrives as Marie is giddily arriving back from the beginnings of her affair with Axel von Fersten (a mid-twenties Jamie Dornan!). She’s running as quickly as her uptight, high-end outfit can allow. She finally crashes onto her canopy bed, and just kinda….stares into space. She’s a teenager in love, maybe for the first time. Tell me “What Ever Happened” doesn’t sound like how that feels.

(Also, I think “What Ever Happened”, a song whose exact meaning appears to be somewhat open to debate, sure seems like it has the trappings of celebrity on its mind. It doesn’t seem to mach this moment lyrically, but it does seem to align with the deeper themes of MARIE ANTOINETTE as a whole.)

The soundtrack to MARIE ANTOINETTE goes on like this. There’s an inherent emotional truth to the songs being used, and that’s why it works. It’s not cheesy novelty (this isn’t peasants screaming”WE WILL ROCK YOU” at a jousting match in A KNIGHT’S TALE) or an incongruous attempt to force the text to support an invalid interpretation (everyone calling their guns swords in ROMEO + JULIET). It’s a way to paint the feeling of a given scene with whatever sound is deemed necessary. Using modern and semi-modern rock as the sonic palette is a conscious choice, but it’s also one with a purpose.

If nothing else, it’s a choice that gets us that coronation scene where The Cure’s “Plainsong” begins blaring, as the future of France (and its two new in-over-their-heads rulers) has changed forever. A top Sofia Coppola musical moment if there ever was one.

———

Dang, Ryan, it sure sounds like you liked it! Well, and I did. But, as I indicated at the top, I didn’t quite love it.

The issue for me is…the movie doesn’t quite have a secondary gear beyond its unique interpretation. I think I enjoyed this idea of who Marie Antoinette might have been like, but I’m not sure it inspired any desire to dig further into the subject, if even just to fact-check the movie.

Now, I try to be really careful not to judge a piece of art for what it isn’t. Thus, I want to make sure I’m not railing on MARIE ANTOINETTE for not being a full-fledged biography or historical document. It’s not trying to be. Its aim is to be a moody and dreamy character piece. In fact, her stated desire for the film was, allegedly, thus:

It is not a lesson of history. It is an interpretation documented, but carried by my desire for covering the subject differently.

In that sense, it’s 100% mission accomplished. And it created a good movie (refer back to everything we just talked about)!

However, I can’t help but think about a movie that Coppola had mentioned as an influence for MARIE ANTOINETTE: Ken Russell’s 1975 ode to Franz Liszt LISZTOMANIA.

There are superficial similarities between the two films. Their principal subjects are famous “celebrities” of their time (and I had little to no historical knowledge of either). They are both anarchic historical biopics in their own way, with equal concern for emotional accuracy as opposed to historical accuracy and, of course, they’re both infused with a modern sensibility. And both films have evoked extremely strong reactions, both positive and negative.

But, of course, they are deeply different films at the end of the day. Russell goes full fucking Ken Russell on LISZTOMANIA (if you haven’t seen it, you must), while MARIE ANTOINETTE is a much gentler type of movie. And there isn’t anything wrong with that. But, maybe just out of its sheer audacity, LISZTOMANIA immediately triggered a strong response from me the second it was over: “I guess I need to bone up on Franz fucking Liszt”.

Alternatively, I guess MARIE ANTOINETTE the movie, as interesting and maybe as underrated as it was, didn’t really get me that excited to learn any more about Marie Antoinette the woman. Further, I don’t know that I was left with much more to chew on when it was over than the notion of “maybe popular history has misunderstood her”. Paradoxically, some solid prior knowledge of this time in world history would almost certainly be a boon to the experience, since the movie’s primary directive is to riff off that knowledge.

Basically, if I had done some studying beforehand, I might genuinely have loved MARIE ANTOINETTE. Further, there’s a very real chance that with some studying, this could become a movie I love on a re-watch. I just don’t know that I’m going to do that solely because I liked it.

Sorry, Sofia. On this one, it’s not you, it’s me.

On the other hand, I think of something Marie says to her first-born child, a daughter instead of the anticipated son, in a moment of quietness about midway through the film. Marie says to Marie Therese, simply:

“You are not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me.”

Yeah.

Reflection and Repression: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

This summer, I’m doing a deep dive into Sofia Coppola’s filmography, mostly because….I’ve always meant to! We start, as always, at the beginning….

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“You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.”

It’s awful being a kid.

It’s an easy thing to forget once you become an adult, when your soul becomes leaden with life’s curses, and you begin to feel the undertow of the boundless sea of nostalgia pull you in. As bleak as it starts to feel once you pass the legal voting age, though, adulthood at least comes with its own certain freedoms. The freedom, for instance, to crack open a beer (or two). The freedom to drive out to the middle of nowhere if the mood strikes. The freedom to hang out with pretty much whoever you want. Sure, those things can all have consequences attached to them, but there’s typically nobody in your way of doing much of anything.

As a kid? Your freedoms depend mostly on the mercies of the guardians surrounding you. You’re too young for beer; you’d be lucky if you’re allowed to even drink a sugary soda every once in awhile. Your ability to travel hangs on the ability and desire of a parent to give you a ride, there and back. And god help you if one of your friends (or…gulp…boyfriend) fails to merit your mom or dad’s approval. And this is all assuming your parents are anything resembling normal. Your already impossibly small world can become almost unbearably tiny if you’re dealt an especially bad parental hand.

How you deal with the restriction of freedom inherent to your adolescence and teenage years can make or break you. One option is to just sort of accept the ennui and decide to start doing things to amuse yourself, like writing crappy stories in a composition notebook, which can lead you down the path of eventually writing articles about Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN and Lembeck’s THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE within weeks of each other during a pandemic (just as an example).

Or…you can rebel. And there are lots of ways to reclaim your freedom. You can lie to your parent’s faces just because. You can thumb your nose at their religion or beliefs. You can secretly call or text that boy they disapprove of.

Or, in the most extreme of cases…you can opt out of it all entirely.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner, James Woods

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: May 19, 1999 at the Cannes Film Festival, general release April 21, 2000

Length: 97 minutes

Based on the 1993 Jeffrey Eugenides novel, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES takes us back to 1975 Michigan to tell the story of the Lisbon family through the perspective of a group of neighborhood boys, reflecting back on their youth as grown men in the present. Seemingly living comfortably in a Grosse Pointe suburb, the Lisbons consist of the mother Sara (Turner), the father Ronald (Woods) and five daughters: Lux (Dunst), Mary (A.J. Cook), Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall), Therese (Leslie Hayman), and Bonnie (Chelse Swain). One summer day, Cecilia attempts suicide by slitting her wrists in a bathtub. From there, the movie tracks the Lisbons’ reactions and behavior to this unexpected turn, as well as the boys in the neighborhood that become oddly fascinated with these mysterious girls.

Initially, nobody really knows what to make of Cecilia’s attempt on her own life. Even the well-meaning child psychologist, Dr. Horniker (a role that gives us a wonderful and unexpected Danny De Vito cameo) chalks it up to a cry for help, and suggests increasing her socialization. In response, Mrs. Lisbon instead tightens the reins she has on her daughters, increasing their curfew. After a very forced, very sterile, and very supervised “party” with a couple of neighborhood boys, Cecilia excuses herself and leaps off the balcony onto the metal fencing below.

We follow as Lux begins a secret love affair with one of the hottest boys in school, Trip Fontaine (Hartnett). Their romance burns brightly before being inevitably extinguished in a cruelly arbitrary manner, and curfew becomes tighter and tighter for the Lisbon children. The daughters are pulled out of school and are essentially on house arrest. In response, Lux sneaks onto the roof at night to have random hookups with strange boys. From there, the movie chugs along towards the ending indicated by its title.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is about…well, it’s about a lot of things. It’s partly a story of feminine interiority. It’s also partly a story about the struggle for identity and autonomy in an inherently restrictive environment. Most interestingly, though, it’s also a story mostly told through the eyes of a group of boys. As mentioned, the film is narrated by one of the neighborhood kids (voiced by Giovanni Ribisi), now a grown man, reflecting back on this time of his life where he and his friends were obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, due mostly to the fact that they were so completely…unknowable. They’re not really allowed to go out much, they don’t really socialize….they’re essentially blank slates for others to project their dreams onto. Although we never see the boys as men in the present (although we do see a grown-up Trip, more on that in a minute), their perspective ultimately serves as audience surrogate, our window into the story’s central family.

This would seem, at first glance, to be counter-intuitive. A story about women told from the perspective of men? Phooey! However, I think this extra layer of narrative removal achieves the effect of keeping the girls further away from us. For instance, the only way the boys ever really get any insight into any of the sisters is through Cecilia’s journal after she passes. Even then, they’re only left to imagine what their documented experiences might have looked like, or how those experiences may have played out. Other than that, they really only have their assumptions and gut feelings. And so do we. When it comes to the Lisbon sisters, we know about as much about them as the boys do, which adds to the film’s mysterious and dreamlike haze.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is also a story that Coppola almost didn’t get to tell at all. Before pivoting to filmmaking, it felt like she was best known for most of the 1990’s as the scapegoat for why THE GODFATHER PART III fell short of its astronomical expectations. By the time she was given a copy of Eugenides’ book in 1998 (by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore), she was technically too late to turn it into a film, as a studio had already greenlit a production. However, she just wasn’t able to shake how the book had made her feel, specifically citing it as the reason she decided to finally enter the family business:

I really didn't know I wanted to be a director until I read The Virgin Suicides and saw so clearly how it had to be done.

So, she wrote her own script anyway, mostly as a private project for herself. As fortune would have it, the original production subsequently fell through, and she was able to pitch her script to the production company that owned the rights to the book. She made a strong enough impression that she was hired on to be both the writer and the director.

The cast was assembled fairly quickly. Turner, who had previously worked with Coppola on 1986’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, was allegedly the first to sign on. Woods was next, having been impressed both with the script and with the young director. After a extensive search for the right fit for Lux Lisbon, Coppola eventually went with her gut and selected 16-year old Dunst, who was transitioning from a child star to someone on the cusp of adulthood. Hartnett won the role of Trip Fontaine by seemingly embodying that mix of swagger and unbridled youth that Coppola saw in the character.

In the same quote above, Coppola went on to explain exactly what she saw so clearly about the story:

I immediately saw the central story as being about what distance and time and memory do to you, and about the extraordinary power of the unfathomable.

With that in mind (especially that part about the “extraordinary power of the unfathomable”), it immediately becomes clear when watching THE VIRGIN SUICIDES what film influenced Coppola most directly in the crafting of her debut feature: Peter Weir’s 1975 mystery magnum opus PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK.

If you’ve never seen it, HANGING ROCK is ostensibly about a group of Australian girls at the turn of the century that mysteriously disappear during a picnic at…uh…Hanging Rock, an intriguing (and apparently very real) rock formation. But it’s a movie that’s also about…well, it’s also about a lot of other things. It’s about trying to seek understanding of events that will never be clear. It’s about trying to understand the motivations of people that are ultimately unknowable. It’s about the way nature can compel us to do all sorts of things that defy logic and reason. It’s about…look, you should just watch it, it’s great.

As you might be able to surmise, there are lots of similarities between HANGING ROCK and VIRGIN SUICIDES, to the point where it would make for a fascinating double feature. Besides the obvious parallel of a story (adapted from a novel) regarding a group of girls and their seemingly inexplicable removal from this life, it also features a boy trying (and failing) to understand the girls he admires from afar. Hell, even the costumes in Weir’s film seem to have parallels in Coppola’s; the Lisbon daughters’ unfortunate set of prom dresses bears a very close resemblance to the Appleyard school uniforms.

Another key similarity between the two films is this sense of extreme feeling being intentionally buried beneath the surface, just waiting for enough heat to cause an explosion. Yes, they deal with different types of feelings (in HANGING ROCK, it’s existential and indefinable dread; in VIRGIN SUICIDES, it’s the relief of human passion), but in both cases, the narrative is driven by this urgent sense that something bad is going to happen sans the resolution of this imperceptible note.

To be clear, they are ultimately very different movies, both in tone and in texture; THE VIRGIN SUICIDES feels like a foggy dream you keep trying to hold onto, while PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK feels more like a vivd nightmare you can never shake again. But seeing this kind of connective tissue is exciting nonetheless! And it’s thrilling to be able to see a very young Sofia Coppola consume an international masterwork and learn all the right lessons from it.

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One of the most striking things about THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is how understated everything driving the narrative is. It’s a story that’s driven by behavior and feeling, which can sometimes get interpreted as '“boring” (an opinion that also gets levied against Coppola’s follow-up feature, LOST IN TRANSLATION). And it’s true, VIRGIN SUICIDES perhaps doesn’t precisely have that A-B-C structure that we normally look to in stories. Yes, there’s a lot of scenes that consist of things happening, but if a viewer isn’t able to connect with the film on an emotional level, it might not be clear what exactly Coppola is trying to say.

But the beating heart of a dramatic story is so definitely there, and being able to lock in on the emotions most of these characters want to express here is what makes for a thrilling watch. Zeroing in specifically on that feeling of longing and repressed desire is the key to unlocking what THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is all about. When you do, you can see two simultaneous and intertwined ideas within the film emerge: the suffocating effect of “normal suburbia” on youth, and the foggy effects of nostalgic memory.

We experience the first idea through what we get to see of the Lisbon sisters and the way at least two of them react to their parents’ fierce clinging to what they can control, out of a complete and paralyzing fear of the uncertain. Cecilia chooses to opt out entirely, successfully committing suicide early on. Lux tries to find feeling and take control in other ways, both through her passionate fling with Trip, then later through random trysts on the roof. In both cases, it’s a call and response to the panicked restriction of control, motivated by the Lisbon parents’ misguided attempts to keep things “normal” and mitigate risks against that normalcy. Ultimately, this push and pull between the parents and the sisters ends up being a race to the bottom.

We experience the second through the narrative framing of the movie. It’s important to reiterate that the narration is reflective, someone in the present trying to recall events of the past, making the entire movie a flashback of sorts. When taking the events of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES in totality, it becomes clear that this is also the story of a grown man trying to sort through maybe the craziest thing he’s ever experienced, desperately searching for an answer to the inexplicable events of his past, trying to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical.

In both threads, the idea of repressed passions keep coming up to the surface. Let’s go back to the boys reading Cecilia’s diary entries. It’s fascinating just how vivid their imaginations become when envisioning those diary pages playing out, and the visual language of the movie changes in kind. The moments that take place in their mind’s eyes are all shot like scenes from a particularly relaxed music video; dreamy shots of unicorns, silhouettes of the sisters superimposed against a normal blue sky (I’d also argue this is the visual influence of HANGING ROCK seeping through again). It’s all a stark contrast to the more washed-out world of 70’s suburbia the movie normally resides in.

Coppola directs all of this with a surprising amount of control and confidence. She does a wonderful job with a difficult assignment: making the invisible visible. To be blunt, subtle filmmaking is really fucking hard. To some degree, more “kinetic” directors have an easier job. Not that action movies are easy (compare the level of craft in an average Mission: Impossible to the endless parade of bullshit Netflix has been crapping out, lest one think action filmmaking is a lesser art form), but the story is usually there in front of you. Motivations are explicitly stated. The twists and turns in a given scene can be seen through a pair of fists. In something like VIRGIN SUICIDES, all those emotions need to be invisible, yet still deeply felt.

All this to say that this makes Coppola’s debut feature an astounding achievement. I’d stop short of saying it’s a perfect film. I have quibbles: I don’t think the boys themselves are all that memorable, unfortunately. Also, the toxic gas leak at the debutante ball near the end of the film is on-the-nose in a way almost nothing else in VIRGIN SUICIDES is. Even still, there are all these little touches throughout the film that inform the story without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. Like the tree in the front lawn that’s dead from the roots, an early symbolic sign that something is deeply wrong in the foundation of the Lisbon home. Or the sad insistence within the community that Cecilia’s suicide was actually just an unfortunate accident; they always knew those metal fences were dangerous!

A less dire example that also comes to mind is the reveal that Lux has written Trip’s name on her underwear are shot and crafted to align with this “under the surface” nature; we see the relevant part of her underwear via a superimposed iris over her prom dress. Like every emotion felt by every kid in this movie, it’s only there if you know where to look.

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Even know you’re clued into them ahead of time just by reading the title, the suicides that bookend the film still come as somewhat shocking surprises on a first watch. On a second go, however, when you can really take in the behaviors on display, and the undercurrent of unexpressed (and unfulfilled) desire that infuses every primary character….it becomes clear that for these sisters, there’s truly no other way but out.

Given all of this, the unexpressed pain our main characters feel, and their ultimate fates, it’d be easy to paint the Lisbon parents as abusive monsters. But that’s the beautiful things about THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, at least as a screenplay: it’s really, really careful not to dramatize them that way. As presented here, they’re not actively abusive, not really. Not in the way we normally see abuse depicted in film. Instead, they’re presented as terrified. The Lisbons are 70’s-era religious, scared and confused. They’re overprotective to the point of genuinely repressing their children’s feelings, which creates an ouroboros of action-reaction (the Lisbon sisters desire even further rebellion and social interaction as it becomes further and further restricted, and that desire leads to further restriction….and on and it goes).

Kathleen Turner plays all of this with stark realism. In lesser hands, Mrs. Lisbon could have been a caricature of a religious head of household (and to be clear, she is The Head of This Household), an unfeeling zealot that craves complete dominance over her progeny. But, in Turner’s hands, she manages to be weirdly sympathetic, even as you desperately want to shake her and make her realize the damage she’s doing.

The biggest surprise, though: despite currently spending his twilight years being a complete ghoul, James Woods is….quite good! It helps that the character is wildly well-written, another understated Lisbon parent who has no idea how to even function, let alone do right by his daughters. Again, he isn’t a mean, abusive villain. He’s a total dork, a high-school science teacher, all white shirt and earth tones. What help can he really lend to his five daughters dealing with the pain of being a teenager? What counter-balance can he possibly provide to his scared-out-her-mind wife? So he doesn’t. It’s a realistic (and under-discussed) scenario, that of the man who applies for the job of father, only to turn out to only be just okay at it once he gets it.

Of the five actresses that play the Lisbon daughters, easily the one with the most to do is Kirsten Dunst. Although she’d already starred in major hits like JUMANJI and SMALL SOLDIERS, with future hits like BRING IT ON and SPIDER-MAN right around the corner, this still manages to feel like a career-making performance. Effortlessly sexy (but, crucially, only mysteriously so), she serves as good of a gauge as to the headspace of the Lisbon daughters as a collective as anyone else. When Trip makes the boneheaded decision to abandon her after having sex on the football field the night of homecoming, your heart sinks. It’s not just because we know what this is going to portend, but because Dunst embodies Lux’s heartbreak and shame so perfectly.

Hartnett is also dynamite as Trip, the perfect embodiment of the 70’s high school heartthrob. He and Dunst are just perfect together, and their chemistry is insane. There’s a very simple scene in a movie theatre where the two touch hands for the first time; you almost can’t breathe during it, a consequence of a film repressing its passions until two characters can’t help it anymore. When they finally begin to make out in his car, as the needle drops on Heart’s “Crazy on You”*…you can’t help but get swept up.

*(Shout out to the soundtrack, by the way. Coppola was careful not to overload it with a bunch of music from the period in order to preserve a little timelessness, but the few tracks that she does opt to use hit like gangbusters; sorry, James Gunn, but Sofia got to 10cc a decade and a half before you. But the actual film score by Air? Beautiful. “Playground Love”, the defacto theme of the film? Just great. It’s sometimes silly to break down loving a movie to something this reductive, but….a movie with a cool soundtrack makes me feel cool for watching it. In this sense, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is an A+.)

However, I’ve always been most intrigued by the somewhat-incongruous flash-forward to an adult Trip (Michael Pare), who appears to be in detox treatment and deeply, deeply regretful for taking off on Lux all those years ago. In no other scenario in the film’s 97 minutes do we ever leave the confines of mid-70’s Michigan. So to all of a sudden be in 1999 for a minute or two in the middle of the film feels like Sofia intentionally drawing our eye.

It’s a diversion that the book takes as well, and I think it’s a way for both mediums to illustrate how the inexplicable casual cruelness that only teenage boys can truly exhibit tends to come back to haunt them as adults. It’s heavily implied in the film that his addictions as an adult stem from the guilt of leaving Lux at the football field. Now she’s dead, taken by her own hand, and all he’s left with are the feelings he felt and the inexplicable dick move that he probably couldn’t even justify in the moment, much less twenty-five years later.

As to why we get specific insight into Trip and not our narrator or any of his friends? I chalk that up to Trip no longer being an outsider. He got to tango with at least one Lisbon. He knew Lux, at least a little. So we get to know Trip. At least a little.

More to the point, adult Trip shows us directly the devastating power of memory. Trip is left with only his recollections as a young buck, when the world was rife with opportunity, when you could put basically anything into your body with minimal consequence. Now, as he sits with regret, he has only memories.

In the end, that’s all the Lisbon sisters are to our boys: the physical representation of a time gone by, never to return. A time where the world seemed like a dream, where even the unique horrors of childhood felt a little magical, detached from reality. That’s the nature and power of nostalgia (and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES): it can make you even miss the ghosts.