With Marie Antoinette celebrating its 20th anniversary, the cult favorite is getting a well-deserved moment in the spotlight. The festivities include a costume exhibition at Versailles, a new 4K restoration currently making the rounds, and a documentary about the making of the film, Making Marie Antoinette which I just caught at the Philadelphia Film Festival.
Sofia Coppola’s 2006 Marie Antoinette was her blank-check follow-up after winning an Oscar for writing and directing the semi-autobiographical Lost in Translation. It was an ambitious, $40 million, star-studded period piece shot in the very halls where its subject once lived before being beheaded at just 37. The film was ahead of its time, pairing its period setting with a contemporary soundtrack. Coppola’s use of music and perspective was a deliberate attempt to help younger audiences connect with the historical figure, but the approach proved divisive among audiences and critics. In the years since, however, the film has received a much-deserved reassessment.
I loved the film from the get-go, particularly how bittersweet Kirsten Dunst’s portrayal of its protagonist is. Here is an outsider longing for some kind of emotional connection after being married off at 14 to the Dauphin of France. It’s also a surprisingly grounded take on the princess fantasy many girls are fed growing up. Instead of ruling happily alongside her charming prince, Marie Antoinette is shipped off to a foreign land, isolated from everything she knows, and married to a stranger who has little interest in her. Meanwhile, her parents and everyone around her pile on the pressure to produce an heir, as if the failure to make it happen is somehow her fault.
Making Marie Antoinette was shot and directed by Sofia’s mother, Eleanor Coppola, who was responsible for what I consider one of the greatest film documentaries of all time: Hearts of Darkness, her chronicle of the madness that birthed Apocalypse Now. Eleanor captured 80 hours of footage during the production, but the material sat untouched for more than a decade before being unearthed during the pandemic. Although Eleanor passed away a few years ago, the documentary has now been completed, with Diane Lane providing voiceover narration drawn from Eleanor’s journals. The result offers an intimate look at another member of the Coppola family, this time through the eyes of a mother watching her daughter navigate an enormous production.
With Sofia’s own mother behind the camera, there’s a candidness and intimacy here that elevates the film beyond its behind-the-scenes subject matter. Takes often begin with an acknowledging smile from the person on the other side of the camera, as you watch their guard drop before they speak or react. While the film delivers the basic making-of material you’d expect, Eleanor’s narration adds something much more personal. She reflects on the once-rocky relationship between herself and her daughter and how their shared passion for filmmaking ultimately brought them closer. At one point, she notes that she had three children by the age Sofia is now, reflecting on the creative sacrifices she made to raise a family while finding a way to live vicariously through her daughter’s work.
The film is as much about Sofia navigating a massive production as a young woman trying to retain her creative voice as it is a portrait of a mother who found solace behind the camera. Through Eleanor’s lens, we see not simply a young director fighting to keep Marie Antoinette front and center in a male-dominated production, but a daughter pushing herself to the limit, even contracting bronchitis early in the shoot.
Making Marie Antoinette offers up more than a simple EPK; it’s a moving tribute to Eleanor Coppola, whose daughter would go on to inspire her own filmmaking career. Eleanor made her feature directorial debut at 80, becoming the oldest woman to do so. It’s a fitting legacy for a woman who spent so much of her life documenting the creative ambitions of others. This documentary is every bit as personal and intimate as the films Sofia Coppola directed, and a lovely reminder that sometimes the most revealing story unfolding behind the camera is the one happening within the family itself.
