“Making Marie Antoinette” is a heart-tugging tribute to mothers and daughters, capturing the deep admiration and affection between director Sofia Coppola and late mom Eleanor, her biggest cheerleader and an unsung filmmaker in her own right.
But the exquisite new documentary (now in theaters, streaming on Mubi Nov. 6) is also about a young woman finding her voice on movie sets.
When Coppola helmed the 2006 costume drama “Marie Antoinette,” she was coming off the Oscar-winning success of “Lost in Translation” and her hypnotic debut, “The Virgin Suicides.” But she'd never tackled anything on the scale of “Marie Antoinette,” which brought hundreds of extras and craftspeople to the actual Palace of Versailles to tell the story of France's ill-fated
queen (Kirsten Dunst).
Through Eleanor's fly-on-the-wall footage, we watch Coppola command the production in her uniquely powerful way: thoughtful and soft-spoken yet decisive in her vision.
“There’s this pressure to be extroverts, and I’m like, ‘Some of us aren’t extroverts!’” Coppola tells USA TODAY. “My mom was very quiet and understated, but she was also a really strong person and got things done, so I think I get that from her. I remember on ‘Virgin Suicides,’ my dad [Francis Ford Coppola] was telling me to say ‘action’ louder. And I was like, ‘It’s just not me!’”
Watching the documentary, “it’s embarrassing because I see myself as a young director not as comfortable asserting myself,” Coppola adds. “Twenty years later, I’m more comfortable asking for what I want. And I hope that’s encouraging for young filmmakers: that they can see there’s an evolution.”
Why the 'party' of 'Marie Antoinette' is so relatable to modern audiences
“Marie Antoinette” was roundly dismissed upon release by critics, who were rankled by Coppola’s cotton-candy aesthetics and post-punk soundtrack. Many reviews sneered that it was too "girly," making derogatory comparisons to Paris Hilton and MTV's "My Super Sweet 16."
“That was equated with not being serious, and I felt really connected to that girliness and femininity,” Coppola says. “There’s value in that.”
The $40 million drama was a box-office disappointment, but over the next decade, it gradually found an audience through repertory screenings and home video. Now, critics widely consider “Marie Antoinette” one of the best movies of the 21st century, while Gen Z has embraced the film’s Rococo riot grrrl heroine as a fashion icon.
The movie, now back in theaters celebrating its 20th anniversary, became “a bonding thing for mothers and daughters, and I love when boys tell me that it meant so much to them. I felt the connection to young gay men, that it was something we had in common,” Coppola says. “It means so much to me – and Kirsten, too, because she felt bad. She got harsh criticism about it and felt responsible, and I did, too. So it’s been gratifying to know there is a generation that connects to it. My kids show me the hip-hop edits on TikTok, and I love seeing those.”
The magic trick of “Marie Antoinette” is how much you root for Dunst’s vibrant teenage monarch: a stranger in a strange land who copes with her unhappy matrimony by spending in excess and turning a blind eye to bad news. In that light, it’s unsurprising the film has been so fervently reclaimed in 2026, given the world's fraught state.
“I do think we need some beauty and escape right now. There are those themes of the party on the verge of collapse,” Coppola says. “But I also found some old reviews, and they were all by men saying this wasn’t their thing. Now, there’s a whole voice of young women who are shaping culture.” Because of that shift, “there is an audience.”
'Making Marie Antoinette' director Eleanor Coppola strove for 'truth'
Eleanor shot nearly 100 hours of B-roll and interviews behind the scenes of “Marie Antoinette,” a small fraction of which was later used for DVD extras. But while the Coppola family sheltered in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her daughter started going through footage and wondering whether they could make a full-length movie. Eleanor later died in 2024 at age 87.
“At the end of her life, she really wanted it to be finished, so I felt it was my mission to complete it,” Coppola says. So she teamed up with editor Aaron Matthews and actress Diane Lane, who poignantly narrates the documentary using selections from Eleanor’s journals.
For Eleanor, it was most imperative that the doc captured all the craftsmanship that went into “Marie Antoinette”: the ornate costumes, the elaborate food spreads and the gorgeous, fresh flowers that lined the halls of Versailles.
“She also really cared about showing the truth of what goes into anything creative. She wanted to see the hard parts,” Coppola says. “She wanted to shoot me when I was tired and didn’t want to be on camera, and I tried to leave that [footage] in. I never planned to show my vulnerable state in a film, but she wanted to show all the real aspects of how people make things.”
Coppola says she's thinking about what she wants to do next, and she hopes to reunite with Dunst on another film soon.
“I want to do something with her now at this stage of her life,” Coppola says of her frequent collaborator. “She’s always interesting to me, and now she’s at a different point.”
As a director, she credits Eleanor with her curiosity and eye for detail. She now shares those qualities with her own daughters with Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars: Romy, 19, and Cosima, 16. Last year, Coppola directed a music video for Romy, a rising pop singer and actress.
“Seeing this footage now, it was touching to me in a different way because I have a grown daughter making things,” Coppola says. “I’m always so proud and love seeing what she’s making, and I can see that my mom had that same feeling toward me. My mom was always encouraging about me doing things my way, so I feel like that about Romy: I love seeing what she’s into and what she comes up with. It’s fun to have creative kids.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Marie Antoinette’ got ‘harsh’ reviews. Sofia Coppola thinks she knows why.
