Kate Schroeder
Every documentarian has their own taste. Eleanor Coppola‘s is to turn on the camera and roll on things that interest her. On location of Marie Antoinette, directed by her daughter Sofia Coppola in 2006, what interested her was time. Jason Schwartzman plucking a harpsicord, flip flops intermingling with French silk kitten heels, a man on his cell phone standing over a post-baroque buffet. “I love seeing where the illusion of the set meets reality,” the filmmaker said in a voiceover.
The reality is 2005, Versailles. Kirsten Dunst is wearing a thing ribbon around her neck as the famed Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. After back-to-back hits with The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, the latter of which earned Sofia an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the then-34-year-old director was given un0precedented filming access to the Palace of Versailles to film her decadent biopic about the women whose legacy has been whittled down into a phase she was once rumored to have uttered: “let them eat cake.”
Accompanied by her documentarian mother, Sofia trudged along into her first “big budget” production. Camera in town, Eleanor is overcome watching her daughter (“so small”, she observed) navigate all the people, the questions, and the endless corsets each day would bring. What follows for the next hour is an extended cut of the Marie Antoinette bonus features (Eleanor did release a short called The Making of ‘Marie Antoinette’ on the film’s DVD release), and it is delightful.
Making Marie Antoinette is a co-production between the Coppola matriarchs. During COVID while the family was in lock down together, Eleanor pulled out the 80-some-odd hours of footage she had shot with her little handheld camera, and started sifting through. With it, she kept a journal of thoughts and observations, which she recorded and serves as a narration throughout the documentary. When Eleanor passed away in April of 2024, Sofia and her co-producers finished the film in her mother’s honor.
In the documentary, Eleanor tells the audience of her creative ambitions. A documentarian at heart, she put her own ambitions aside to watch her family fulfill theirs. She watched their pursuit of film become the center of their worlds, consuming them in mind and body. In the process, Eleanor made the family her sole focus. For the first time, the audience can see and hear the muse behind two of the greatest directors of their generation – her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and her daughter, Sofia Coppola. In all her wisdom, Eleanor observes Marie Antoinette both as a journalist, and a proud mother.
And what we see is delightful.
We see Sofia lead her cast and crew in an Italian chant, a sort of pre-filming ritual for all the Coppola’s. There’s wardrobe fittings, decadent and outrageous food designs of cake, caviar, and gelatin molds sustaining questionable, edible bits. We see the making of the final scene with Kirsten’s porcelain skin, a head above the bathtubs, her dark purple lips outlining the aforementioned “let them eat cake”, as Sofia discusses how much jewelry one would wear in the bath. In one vignette, the cast gets sidetracks during a dining scene when Asia Argento (who played Madame du Barry) starts reading palms. All of these weave together the tapestry of Sofia’s work ethic, a quiet but firm demeanor.
For example, Sofia pushes back on multiple attempts to add a male POV to the film. She adds extras to a scene that feels two-dimensional. She fills the frame with detailed shoes made of extravagant bits and baubles that a producer says just won’t work. She re-dresses Dunst from an all-black ensemble to one with slight more dimension and color, while the character is supposed to be mourning – Marie Antoinette is sad but not that sad. It’s high-class. It’s punk. It’s these tweaks that make Sofia a filmmaker, not merely her famous father’s heir.
And after all, this is Sofia’s set. Part of the way through the audience is treated to a visit from Francis. “Do you want to be in control?” Eleanor asks her husband, “no,” he responds before giving a history lesson of the boom mic to anyone who would listen.
In many ways, watching these exquisite scenes in their undone state makes Marie Antoinette more enjoyable.
If the film were to end there, it would still be a satisfying, fascinating look into the making of a cult classic, enough to encourage a generation or two of upcoming film students. But in the overall shape of the film, let’s call all that came before the frosting. Where we get into the body of the cake is when Eleanor shape shifts from documentarian to journalist, to mother. At one point Eleanor asks Sofia why she’s so interested in isolated female protagonists, and Dunst, a former child actor, reveals how much of herself she sees in Maria Antoinette, being dropped into a world of excess she doesn’t yet understand. Eleanor’s maternal instinct takes over when Sofia gets sick. Eleanor asks a producer to bring in a doctor (Sofia was diagnosed with bronchitis and given anti-biotics).
This is where Making Marie Antoinette goes from a “making-of” featurette, to a fully-baked love story of a mother and her daughter.
One day, Sofia’s brother Roman Coppola comes in to direct a few second unit shots. Eleanor observes the two of them as adults, co-workers, and calls their relationship one of her greatest treasures. She’s filled with gratitude hearing Schwartzman, Sofia’s cousin who plays King Louis, describe why she’s such a fun person to work with, and seeing Sofia’s niece, Gia Coppola, patiently sit through having her wig re-dyed to the perfect shade of red for her cameo in the masquerade ball.
All of this culminates into Eleanor’s overall thesis about film, which is that making movies is a way of moving through linear time. On set of Marie Antoinette, Eleanor is standing in 1700s France, but one moment looking at her daughter doing a certain task or certain tone, and she’s reminded of her angsty teen years. Back and forth. In 2023, Eleanor is looking back at this old footage at Sofia, not yet a mother or wife, and is reminded of the time she thanked her in her Oscar speech. On set, Sofia’s strategizing with Roman, and Eleanor can’t help but see them as two little kids running around dad’s set, what feels like yesterday.
All at once Eleanor sees her past, present, and the future through her children, her greatest creative fulfillment.
SCORE: ★★★1/2
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