Kirsten Dunst stars as Marie Antoinette in writer/director Sofia Coppola's lavish look at the Queen of France, beginning with her marriage to Louis XVI and ending when she is forced out of Versailles by an angry mob.
Playing Dress-Up - The Costumes of Marie Antoinette: "Milena [Canonero] built my character through my clothing and I felt differently in every dress that I wore. She evoked things in me and I paid attention to everything. She collaborated with me on colors. Sofia [Coppola] definitely knew that she wanted us to look like a macaroon box in the beginning, very brightly colored. I went through kind of a gauzier, lighter feeling and than black obviously when she’s mourning her children. The cuts are more adult as I got older. The clothing in the film is so beautiful.”
Walking the Same Halls as the Real Marie Antoinette: “I couldn’t imagine having to shoot this in Burbank or something like that. I always sense the essence and the atmosphere of a movie. I think that’s what Sofia evokes so powerfully in her films, is atmosphere. I don’t think she could have made this movie anywhere else. For me, to have that - it’s a character in itself. I could walk around at night before I shot the balcony scene and look in mirrors and touch the wall and look at a clock. To be in a place where you think, ‘Well, maybe she looked at this clock,’ and, ‘I wonder if she looked at herself in the mirror when she was feeling…’ Your imagination, there’s so much to feed when you’re actually in the places.”
Asked if she felt Marie Antoinette’s presence, Dunst responded, “I just tried to get a sense of her perfume and her essence. But I just don’t know if I could say that I actually felt her, you know what I mean? There’s a fine line you walk there, you know? I’m not going to sound like a crazy woman. I have no idea. There are moments when you’re like, ‘I hope she’s okay with me playing her.’ You get those thoughts in your head and when you go into those really private areas, like her theater, those are times when I don’t know, you feel like you’re in a dream a little bit.”
The Childlike Quality of Marie Antoinette: “All of my friends and my family, everyone in my life, I see the childlike quality in all of them. I think part of her struggle was not being able to feel like a woman. She had no sensuality in her life other than what she was eating or wearing. She didn’t feel like a woman, and I think that her position in the court was just a pawn. I don’t think she was treated like a human being. I think towards the end of her life, her prison years were probably when she most felt like she had a purpose - even though it was doomed.
I think at that moment on the balcony is when she’s really faced with reality for the first time in her life. I think you can’t feel in yourself and feel like a real person or alive if you’re living in this place where everybody is expecting so much of you and you don’t even know yourself. I think it all became about like a little kid would. ‘I want to play with this; I want to watch this movie. Now I want to eat sugar.’ That was kind of my way of navigating and making her a sympathetic person.”
Growing Up in the Spotlight: Marie Antoinette was thrust into the public spotlight at a young age, with her every move scrutinized. In a weird way, Antoinette’s life is similar to young actors growing up in front of camera. Comparing the two very different worlds Dunst said, “There is definitely a lot of frivolity and you know I don’t really want to judge people. Girls are trying to grow up in a business that is very difficult and you lose yourself. I think that you compare Marie Antoinette to high school and they are just teenagers. I think that you can relate it to a lot of different circumstances and not just young Hollywood. But I guess growing up and having that attention and having people gossip about you and all of that, yes, but they’re not running a country. They’re acting. You can move to Austin, Texas and be okay if you don’t want to be followed and you don’t want that life. She really had no choice, Marie Antoinette. I mean you make a decision when you go out the door whether you want to go grocery shopping in the valley or have lunch at The Ivy, you know what I mean?”
Analyzing Marie Antoinette: “I had to love her. I was playing her and we wanted to make her understandable. I had to not judge her for those things, but try to understand her psychology behind it all. I couldn’t hate her or think she was stupid or frivolous for the things that she did. I mean, you know when she wants to plants trees? I think she probably wants to feel rooted in her life. I was trying to figure out my own descriptions for things, because you don’t have video. You don’t know what she sounds like. We did speak to different historians and everyone has a different opinion. It’s about Sofia’s take on this film and then how I can facilitate that, and how I can feel as best as I can as what she might have been feeling.”
