- Remind me to never see another one of Sofia Coppola’s movies again. I don’t mind The Virgin Suicides (mostly because Josh Hartnett makes it bearable) but I couldn’t stand Lost In Translation. I think she’s trying to go for “sublime” most of the time, except her idea of “sublime” translates into “death by boredom” for me. Leave the slow-mo-walking-through-long-grass shots to Ridley Scott, for god’s sake.
- Satisfying Thing Number 1: the costumes. It will likely get nominations for this, and this alone deserves any accolades the movie might get.
- Satisfynig Thing Number 2: the food. I bet it was styled by the editors of Bon Appetit or something.
- Evidently the French critics have been complaining that it’s historically inaccurate, and the filmmakers have been saying that they weren’t going for historical accuracy so much as a general “feel” of the period. Even then I didn’t really get much of a “feel” for the period. The plight of the poor in France is so completely glossed over it’s not funny, and I don’t mean that the royals were ignoring it because they wanted to continue with their debauchery and what have you, I mean that it was barely mentioned at all, which makes the people involved in the Revolution look like they’re having a mass freak out for no real reason. I get that this mirrors the royals’ failure to notice anything was wrong, but there’s no context for the peasants’ anger as a result.
- WTF NO BEHEADING. Rarely do I get to see the guillotine on screen, and they do me the complete dissatisfaction of ending the film before the execution.
- People (critics) keep commenting on how postmodern this movie is with it’s modern music and glamourous American actresses and blah blah blah whatever the hell else except… it fails on that front too. For a movie meant to be about the excesses of one of the crowned heads of Europe, they do a pretty good job of not conveying that excess. Maybe I just expected it to be a lot bigger and louder and brighter and over-the-top (PoMo at its finest, after all), except it was just as extravagant as any other film about royals, that is to say it’s about average on the grand scale of royal indulgence caught on film. Meh.
- Rip Torn as the ageing king was a brilliant bit of casting.
Categories: 2 Stars