Let Them Eat Popcorn

From her birth in 1775, young Maria Antonia could easily have been voted by her peers as "Girl Most Likely to Succeed." The favourite child of the Empress of Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor, she was married off at 15 by her matchmaker mother to the heir to the French throne, the most powerful on the continent. Unfortunately young Louis had not been properly trained for his job – it was his elder brother, who had since died, who was given the appropriate education – but that didn't stop the French court blaming their new fun-loving Austrian queen for all their country's problems.

A tragic tale of a innocent young girl unable to achieve her potential at the hands of an ineffectual young idiot male, this seems to fit the themes of director Sofia Coppola's previous films very well. An intellectual psychologist type might speculate whether this has anything to do with some Electra-like disappointment at the inability of men her own age to match her expectations, what with her dad being Francis 'The Godfather' Coppola, who indulged her as a young teenager to the point of making a film co-written by her, starring her, which declared that pre-pubescent girls are old enough to order room service and throw parties by themselves. Of course, as an ineffectual young idiot male, my comment on the truth of this theory goes as far as, "Er…I don't know."

What I do know is that so far her films have been technically mature, and have thrown up for debate the question of whether today's men have been brought up to be capable of any kind of responsibility, which as a young Oscar-winning director with three films under her belt, Sofia is in a perfect position to ask - and the story of Marie Antoinette is a classic example. Not only blamed for their initial lack of children (a medical fault of Louis'), Marie was feared as an Austrian spy and so was denied access to matters of state. Given the job of providing entertainment for the court instead, she took the job to heart, learning stagecraft, improving her talent for music and then getting blamed for opulence when it was clear that Louis' wars were going to bankrupt the country. Charged with starting a revolution, maybe Marie Antoinette's case for the defence has just got under way.