Even Sophia can't save the vapid.

Huh... look at that... I haven't posted in some time! No excuses. Sometimes, that's just how it is.

So, anyway, Jon was in town last weekend! Yay! That was fun... We had a delightful, yet crude, hit-or-miss driving tour of important DC buildings (and the Ikea store)and he put up with me exploring the dark and mysterious Georgetown Mall... and we got to see some movies in an actual theatre!

And I'd been really excited about seeing Marie Antoinette... every other Sophia Coppola effort I've seen has been understated and sardonic without, necessarily, undercutting its own Romanticism. I've found this an appealing mix. And really, I feel like poor Sophia did all she could with this movie. She plugs stridently though, applying a lithely ironic hand, now and again, to a story that is about as rapturous as the Paris Hilton: E! True Hollywood Story. Truly, it's a gorgeously shot, very well-propped little piece of French pastry... but how interesting can two hours of eating eclairs, trying on pink shoes and wondering when the Dauphin (a chubby and un-sexy Jason Schwartzman (Louis XVI was Jewish?)) is gonna finally get down to business with a (not particularly virginal) Kirsten Dunst really get? I wanted to really love this movie-- I wanted to find in it some discussion of the culture that could create a person who was on the tip of every French tongue, and yet, knew so little about the very realm she ruled. But it wasn't there.

If I'm going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt, I'll have to consider that it might be a veiled indictment of this headcold of celebrity adulation that seems to be going around these days... but, really, that doesn't help the fact that our dear departed, beheaded queen of France led a deeply, deeply boring life-- up until the last 3 minutes of this movie, anyway. And a boring life doesn't necessarily lead to a boring movie-- but, alas, this one sure did. I'll equate it with, perhaps, Ellie Parker on my bore-ificense scale. Sorry, Ms. Coppola... try applying your zesty New Wave soundtrack to your more intriguing lower-budget fair, why dontcha?