Sofia Coppola Reincarnates Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette

In 1999, Sofia Coppola began to break away from her father's shadow and into his business. As the daughter of acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia had her work cut out for her, but her type of filmmaking has proved distinctly her own in a truly independent style. It all began with "The Virgin Suicides" starring the teen actress prodigy of "Interview with the Vampire" Kirsten Dunst and a then unknown Josh Hartnett. As the film's title suggests, Dunst winds up dead by her own doing in the end, but she obviously left an impression on "Suicides" director Sofia Coppola.

Sofia's next project earned her an Academy Award for best original screenplay as well as nods for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for the most intense unlikely dramatic star turn of Bill Murray. After "Lost in Translation" garnered much acclaim from critics and then the Academy itself, the young Coppola protege had enough steam gathered to take on an even bigger project. As evident by the new trailers currently running in theaters internationally, she chose "Marie Antoinette," taking her first crack at a historical biopic.

For her star, Sofia brought Kirsten Dunst back before her camera. The previews make Dunst seem born to the role of a young queen who knew nothing of royalty and discovered it all the hard way before she was put to death by the people she ruled without ever having given them much thought while in power. As a country, France suffered terribly under the negligent and ridiculously extravagant reign of Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI. As the trailer illustrates, while Marie made friends and partied with them and scandals erupted about rampant sexual exploits as well as improper behavior and favoritism, the French people were starving and the country was running the highest debt in Europe of this time, leaving the entire country effectively broke.

The famous quote, "Let them eat cake," is commonly attributed to Marie Antoinette in reference to this problem of famine and poverty, but it is now under scrutiny and doubted that this is an accurate translation, if these words were hers at all. Gossip so overran the French court as well as the nation that it is guesswork deciphering some of the outrageous myths from actual facts, though there was more than enough outrageous truth. In fact, there was enough to help spur on the French Revolution, which claims the beheading of the Austrian-born French Queen as one of its grim highlights.

At 14, Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XVI, who was just one year her senior and a complete stranger. In the film, Sofia Coppola's cousin, Jason Schwartzman ("Rushmore" and "Shopgirl") plays Louis XVI. Together, he and Dunst seem to play their parts as the blissfully oblivious monarchs who fall victim to their own shortcomings as rulers in the most tragic way. This is consistent with the general sense history has of them, and while there is that element of biting truth, there will most probably be liberties taken with the rumors surrounding the perceptions of Marie facilitated at the time, though it seems she will be depicted most appropriately in a far more sympathetic light than her critics will think is within believable limits. There lies the beauty of making a film that appears it will be just as much trendy as distinctive in painting a personalized portrait of one of the most notorious and powerful women of historical curiosity.