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But in 2006, Sofia Coppola was on her own. Subversive period pieces had been made before, but very few about women, made by women—and even fewer that could inspire and impact stories far into the future, like Napoleon and countless others, that have pretty little to do with a woman’s place in history (although we, like Napoleon, do love Josephine, let the record show). “All eyes will be on you,” Marie Antoinette’s mother tells her daughter early on in the movie. In our own film history, let this be Coppola’s most direct warning to us all.
Molly Shannon, 2006’s Madame Victoire, praised the director as her “cool girl business partner” (and had demanded to be induced into labor so that she could join the shoot—true story). “Sofia was so calm even when she was shooting these giant set-pieces. I really hadn’t seen a woman making a movie of that stature before, and I felt so lucky to be a part of it every day,” Shannon told Vogue.
Today, we’re lucky to marvel at everything the movie created. Perhaps they didn’t understand Marie Antoinette at the time—but don’t the finest things in life get better with age, and actually outlive us all? Sam, unapologetically, sums it up best: “Cannot think of another movie this century that so fully designed an entire mode of being, an entire catalog of mannerisms and aesthetic interests and [an] entire way of conceptualizing narrative and how we are taught to relate to art. It’s like Meryl Streep explaining the blue that Anne Hathaway is wearing, except instead of a sweater, it’s explaining to white American women the origins of their entire worldview.”
