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“I enjoyed it, but I’m never doing this again.”
Sofia Coppola utters those words toward the end of “Making Marie Antoinette,” a feature documentary about the making of her 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” from her late mother,
Eleanor Coppola.
Playing in the Spotlight section of the New York Film Festival, the fly-on-the-wall doc is compiled from 80 hours of footage that Eleanor shot during the film’s busy production on location at the Palace of Versailles, capturing a young filmmaker coming into her own before our very eyes (as well as plenty of hijinks from stars Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, who plays King Louis XVI and also happens to be Sofia’s cousin). “Marie Antoinette” came out in 2006 to mixed reviews and modest box office returns, but is now regarded as a cult classic.
During the film’s post-premiere Q&A at NYFF, Sofia revealed that the Coppola family were all gathered at their family home in Napa Valley when they decided to revisit Eleanor’s footage for the first time, and it brought back a rush of memories from her time making “Marie Antoinette.” “It’s embarrassing for me,” Sofia said after the film. “When I’m in the trailer complaining that I don’t want to talk to my mom and being not nice… but it’s important to show all the sides, and I’m crabby sometimes!”
Though Eleanor passed away in 2024 at the age of 87, she was “always frustrated that the footage was never put together [into a film],” so Sofia — with the help of editor Aaron Matthews — helped make her vision a reality. Eleanor envisioned an observational film in the vein of Frederick Wiseman, and the doc is narrated by actress Diane Lane, a longtime Coppola family collaborator, who reads Eleanor’s contemporaneous diary entries from twenty years ago. “There wasn’t much drama, so how do you make it not boring?” Sofia pondered during the Q&A.
Although there was some drama. We see Sofia and her team on “Marie Antoinette” overwhelmed at times by the amount of extras and just how long it took cast members to get their hair, makeup and costuming done (the hair, especially). In addition to a monument to Sofia, “Making Marie Antoinette” is also a celebration of the work of Milena Canonero, the film’s costume designer. Canonero created over 70 original dresses for Dunst’s Marie Antoinette alone, and eventually won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
The most compelling scenes in “Making Marie Antoinette,” scheduled to be released Oct. 23 on Mubi, concern Sofia butting heads with her cinematographer, Lance Acord, who wanted more shots showing the perspective of King Louis XVI instead of centering the POV of Marie Antoinette. It’s stirring to see Sofia, who was 34 at the time, push back on Acord’s demands and stay true to her vision. “It’s hard to believe twenty years ago that the female point-of-view was so unusual,” she said during the Q&A. “Now I’m more comfortable at being assertive at what I want… I was still trying to find my way of being assertive on set about what I wanted.”
We also get to take in Schwartzman fooling around on set, playing the harpsichord and cracking jokes to a tiny dog; Dunst giving it her all with a smile; and Asia Argento, who played the icy Madame du Berry, throwing her shoulder into Dunst way too hard during a confrontation scene. Oh, and we also see Thomas Mars, the lead singer of Phoenix and Coppola’s then-boyfriend, be introduced to Eleanor for the first time (Sofia and Thomas are now married with two children).
But mostly we bear witness to Sofia executing her vision with precision and grace. It’s a sight to behold, as is this love letter from mother to daughter (and vice versa). “I get stressed watching it and just seeing how none of us were prepared for a period film and how long the costume changes would take,” Sofia confessed during the Q&A, but added, “I felt so lucky that [my mother] gave this to me, and to have this tribute to her and being with her again.”
