The irony was that, despite being surrounded by thousands of onlookers and attendants, Marie Antoinette felt utterly secluded and alone – a young girl trapped in a fantasy world that left her precious little freedom.
It was this unusual and surprising take on Marie Antoinette that caught the attention of writer/director Sofia Coppola. Like most of us, Coppola was familiar only with the standard myths about the world’s most infamous Queen. Through Fraser’s biography, a more sympathetic and believably human young woman emerged. Here was a Marie Antoinette who was vibrantly youthful and strikingly contemporary in her struggles — with loneliness, gossip, desire, love and coming of age — except that the consequences of her journey unfolded on an enormous historical stage.
“I had heard the usual clichés about Marie Antoinette and her decadent lifestyle,” comments Coppola. “But I had never realized before how young she and Louis XVI really were. They were basically teenagers in charge of running France during a very volatile period and from within an incredibly extravagant setting, the royal court of Versailles. That’s what first interested me: The idea that these young kids were placed in that position and trying to find out what they went through trying to grow up in such an extreme situation.”
The more she learned about her, the more Coppola became fascinated by Marie Antoinette’s inner experience. She was intrigued by the story of how Marie Antoinette was completely uprooted in the middle of adolescence, married off to a royal figure who offered her no warmth or affection, subjected to severe scrutiny, arbitrary rules and public ridicule — and at the same time given license to satisfy her every whim. Coppola wondered how a modern teenager would have handled such a completely surreal situation.
“I became interested in the things Marie Antoinette went through that were relatable on a human level,” Coppola continues. “She was basically regarded as an outsider in France and had to deal with in-laws who didn’t approve of her, a husband who wasn’t interested in her and this entire court, which was highly critical of her. She was like the new kid in school — but in a very alien environment. I could imagine her going off to her private room with her friends to escape the severe rules of court etiquette. I began to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. Throughout history she’s been portrayed as a villain, but as I read about her, the more she seemed quite sweet, a little naïve or sheltered, but mostly a good-hearted, creative person who was unaware of the world outside of Versailles.”
Coppola was also interested in Marie Antoinette as a struggling young wife, desperate to please her husband but incapable of making him happy. “I was taken by the idea that, because she was so unhappy in her marriage, she started shopping and going to parties as a distraction — like a contemporary rich wife in a loveless marriage. She really didn’t want to go home to this guy who was always rejecting her, so she found other ways to distract herself,” Coppola observes.
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