Acclaimed and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola is our most interesting and unconventional director. She adds her own edge and storytelling gifts to portraits of women on the outskirts of society. I haven’t seen all of her films, except Lost in Translation. But, her 2006 anti-biopic Marie Antoinette, starring frequent collaborator Kirsten Dunst, has always been on my radar.
Buy Marie Antoinette (Criterion Collection)Telling Marie’s story without the use of common biographic formulas, the film seems to chart her rise as a young, rebellious queen with an appetite for luxury, desire, and popularity. However, how much fun can she really have before reality kicks in and she’s forced to grow up? In this case, it doesn’t sound completely accurate, but I believe it’s more of a character study of a misunderstood figure who isn’t taken seriously.
Coppola and Dunst are obviously a cinematic match made in heaven, and with this film, they made what sounds like a colorful and sumptuous feast of modernity and of youth being as free as they possibly can, with many costume changes and bubble gum involved.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the folks at Criterion are going to release Coppola’s third feature on 4K UHD and Blu-ray with a new restoration, including supplements such as a new interview with Coppola; new selected-scene commentary featuring Dunst; new program featuring interviews with cinematographer Lance Acord, production designer KK Barrett, and costume designer Milena Canonero; parody short featuring Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI; deleted scenes; music video for Phoenix’s “Run Run Run”; and a trailer. And there’s a new essay by critic Claire Marie Healy.
So, if you are a fan of Coppola, Dunst, or at least period pieces, then this release with be of good use to your collection.
Other releases:
Shoot the Piano Player 4K UHD/Blu-ray (Criterion): Francois Truffant’s 1960 tragicomic noir masterpiece about a jaded dance-hall pianist who gets caught up in a whirlwind love affair and is inadvertently drawn into a violent underworld by his gangster brothers.
Blue Heron (Criterion Premieres): An acclaimed drama about fractured family relationships as a family of six moves into their new home in Canada, whose breakdown really affects the youngest child.
Planet of the Vampires 4K UHD/Blu-ray (Radiance): The 1965 sci-fi horror classic about the crew of two giant spaceships who discover a planet inhabited by alien creatures who possess corpses to attack the living.
Fantasique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French cinema (Radiance): A new box set featuring six films filled with surrealism and other strangers things the lurk in the shadows. Includes Dans la Nuit, La Nuit Fantastique, Le Diable Souffle, The Golem, The Woman with Red Boots, and Three lives and Only One Death.
