Male critics hated it, Gen Z loves it. How Marie Antoinette got the last laugh

Twenty years ago, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival to a torrent of vitriolic reviews. Too frilly, too feminine, too full of frocks, tastelessly peppered with anachronistic indie rock songs, it was punished by a mostly male critical establishment. The film had cost $US40 million; all they saw was too much money spent on girl stuff. “That was equated with not being serious,” says Coppola. The film duly went on to fail at the box office.

Times have changed. Marie Antoinette, with its glamorous visuals and sparkling title performance by Kirsten Dunst, is now regarded as one of the best films of this century, while those zingy needle drops have become a period film convention. A younger generation has discovered and embraced it. This year, commemorative exhibitions have featured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in Versailles, where Coppola was allowed to shoot the film.

Coppola’s own commemoration is, of course, a film: Making Marie Antoinette, a documentary shot on set by her late mother, Eleanor. As you would expect, it reveals the work that went on behind those jewel-encrusted scenes, but it also shows what it was like to be one of very few women directing films in 2005.

“I noticed, when I first watched this footage, how often I had to explain how I wanted to do the film from a female point of view,” Sofia says now. “It was like I was speaking a foreign language.”

To Eleanor’s enduring frustration, only a small fraction of what she shot was used in promotions at the time. The rest sat in storage until 2020, when the Coppola clan convened at the family vineyard to sit out the COVID lockdown. With time to spend together, mother and daughter started the long process of turning 80 hours of footage into a feature. When Eleanor died in 2024, Sofia determined she would finish it, asking editor Aaron Matthews to help.

Excerpts from Eleanor’s own journal, which she had also thought about publishing, are read by her close friend Diane Lane in voice-over. They are infused with a surprising wistfulness. When she was Sofia’s age, she observes, she was raising three children. Her husband and children made films; she became their audience.

“I know that was a big challenge for her,” says Sofia. “She was always really happy to see me working and that my generation of women could have both family and a creative life in a way that she didn’t feel like she could.” At the same time, she wished she could have a creative life of her own. “But she was a great documentarian,” says Sofia. “This is a tribute to her work.”

Eleanor had already made Hearts of Darkness, an extraordinary and unsparing inside story of the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. In that film, everyone is going raving mad. Making Marie Antoinette’s tone, by contrast, reflects Sofia’s quiet sense of purpose, but it also prickles with tension. Will this film ever get made? Why didn’t they realise how long the costume changes and wig washings would take? Everyone is exhausted; Sofia herself is sick; the days extend to nights and then early mornings.

Sofia Coppola was by no means a novice director, whatever the critics said; she came to Marie Antoinette with two successful features behind her and an Academy Award for her script for Lost in Translation. Being the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, however, made her an easy target; they could dismiss her as a nepo baby. All the more so, perhaps, because the Coppola family works as a pack. Here we see her brother Roman as second unit director, her cousin Jason Schwartzman playing Louis XVI, her father popping by and, of course, her mother.

Not everyone would want their mother following them around with a camera, but Sofia says she was glad she was there, even when she insisted on shooting Sofia at her lowest ebb.

“It was much more comfortable to have my mom there than a random crew,” she says now. “I could be much more vulnerable with her. And she loved seeing the set and the costumes, so I was glad to share that with her.” She admits, however, that she cringes seeing her younger self on screen. “To see, like, the way I talked. When I wasn’t as assured in saying what I wanted.”

Watching her mother, however, is still reassuring. “It’s really moving for me to be with her and her perspective, hear her voice and remember that time of her being on set. Also seeing her as a mother watching her daughter.”

Sofia has two daughters of her own with her husband, Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars. Romy is 19, Cosima 16. Romy is embarking on a career as a singer. “I’m always so proud and love seeing what she’s making,” says Coppola. “And I can see now that my mom had that same feeling toward me.”

Making Marie Antoinette is streaming on MUBI.

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