Marie Antoinette is a 2006 historical drama film written, directed, and produced by Sofia Coppola. Based on the 2001 biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, the film covers the life of Marie Antoinette, in the years leading to the French Revolution. The film stars Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette, alongside an ensemble cast.
The film was planned to be an adaptation of Évelyne Lever‘s Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France, a biography she wrote for American readers in 2000. Sofia Coppola bought the rights twice, but in the end she chose Antonia Fraser‘s biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey instead of Lever’s book as the basis for her adaptation.[7] The production was given unprecedented access to the Palace of Versailles.[8] The film takes the same sympathetic view of Marie Antoinette’s life as was presented in Antonia Fraser’s biography.
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four. He stated that, “every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film. This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.”[18]