NEW YORK – “Marie Antoinette” has always been a masterpiece.
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, the 2006 film paints a spellbinding portrait of the doomed queen of France (Kirsten Dunst) as a meek people pleaser-turned-spendthrift party girl. With its anachronistic flourishes and post-punk soundtrack, the sumptuous drama polarized critics upon release, although it has since been embraced
as one of the best movies of the century so far.“Making Marie Antoinette,” which dazzled New York Film Festival on Sept. 29, will only bolster your belief in Coppola’s unparalleled vision.
Directed by the late Eleanor Coppola, the documentary provides an intimate look behind the scenes of the insanely ambitious production, which was given unprecedented access
to film entirely at Versailles and featured a cast of future stars including Jason Schwartzman, Jamie Dornan, Rose Byrne and Tom Hardy, among them.
The documentary features candid interviews from the time with Coppola, who was coming off the Oscar-winning success of “Lost in Translation” and felt overwhelmed by the sheer scope of “Marie Antoinette.” But the film captures the calm and poise she brought to navigating challenges on the set, and how she stood firm in her vision even as many of the men around her – including her own father, director Francis Ford Coppola – second-guessed her ideas.
“It’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, the female point of view was so unusual,” Coppola said during a post-screening Q&A at NYFF. Back then, “I was still trying to find my way of being assertive on set about what I wanted. But now my crew, we know each other. And you grow as a person, so I’m more comfortable in that role. … It makes me want to make a movie again.”
For cinephiles, “Making Marie Antoinette” is a treasure trove of delightfully off-the-cuff moments with the movie's young stars: Dunst sipping canned wine and gazing at a MacBook between takes, while Schwartzman hams it up with a harpsichord and French bulldog.
But most emotionally, the documentary is a tender tribute to Eleanor Coppola, who died in 2024 at age 87. Eleanor shot more than 80 hours of footage on the set of “Marie Antoinette,” which she and her daughter began to cull through together during the COVID lockdown. Coppola finished the documentary after her mother’s death, incorporating entries from her mom’s journal that are narrated by Diane Lane.
Through Lane's voiceover, Eleanor describes the immense pride and joy that she feels getting to watch her daughter direct “Marie Antoinette.” But she also poignantly reflects on her own artistic ambitions that might have slipped away while she was supporting and observing her filmmaker family.
“She felt like, ‘Oh, why am I here? Why aren’t I doing my creative thing?’ And then she realized that this is her creative thing,” Coppola says. “She was thrilled to make her first narrative film [‘Paris Can Wait’] in her 80s, but she was always torn between feeling like she couldn’t be a mother and have a career.
“She was so thrilled that I got to do that,” Coppola adds. “But she was always struggling with that balance of her own creative life and her role as a mother and wife.”
“Making Marie Antoinette” will be released in theaters Oct. 23 before streaming on Mubi Nov. 6.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sofia Coppola honors mom with tear-jerking 'Making Marie Antoinette'
