Punk at the palace.

Marie Antoinette 

* Written and directed by Sofia Coppola * Starring Kirsten Dunst 

* Sony Pictures

It's claimed that when Marie Antoinette was told that her starving subjects were too poor to buy bread, she said, "Let them eat cake." And although she disavows the statement in Sofia Coppola's new candy-colored fantasy, one look at the desserts this queen (Kirsten Dunst) gets to sample will show you that she's clueless enough to have said it. As tall, elaborate, and luscious as Marie's precipitous hairstyles, the cakes at court are just a taste of the over-the-top royal consumption that led to the French Revolution and then to Marie Antoinette's beheading in 1793.

That death goes undramatized in this sly biopic, as Coppola traps the audience in the same luxurious bubble as Marie Antoinette, so when it pops, we're as confused and ill-equipped as she was. This singular approach drew boos at Cannes, where audiences were no doubt expecting a straightforward history lesson--after all, Coppola was gifted with a significant budget and unparalleled access to Versailles, and into this mix she sprinkled Converse sneakers and dance sequences set to Siouxsie and the Banshees. It's not exactly your mother's biopic--unless your mothers Marianne Faithfull (in this film, she's Marie's).

Eschewing historical fact for something more relatable, the film draws more than one parallel between the monarchy and our current celeb-drenched culture, whether it's Marie Antoinette confiding in her male hairdresser, gossiping about who's gay in the court, or breezing through a gifting suite ('What do you have in fans?" she asks the eager attendant).

Really, though, Marie Antoinette is as much about its director as its subject. Like Marie, Coppola was born into (filmmaking) royalty and thrust into the public eye before she was ready (thanks to her poorly received turn in The Godfather: Part III). Though Coppola was punished with a Razzie, not a beheading, it's clearly made her sympathetic to Marie. She's rewarded us with a one-of-a-kind portrait that's tres magnifique.