"Marie-Antoinette" is a 2006 historical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Kirsten Dunst. The film is based on the life of the Queen in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
In several 2006 interviews, Coppola suggests that her highly stylized interpretation was intentionally very modern in order to humanize the historical figures involved. She admitted taking great artistic liberties with the source material, and said that the film does not focus simply on historical facts – "It is not a lesson of history. It is an interpretation documented, but carried by my desire for covering the subject differently." The film received both applause and some boos during early Cannes Film Festival press screenings, which one reviewer supposes was because some of the French journalists may have been offended that the film was not sufficiently critical of the régime's decadence.
