CINEMA CLASSICS SEMINAR: MARIE ANTOINETTE

$30 for BMFI members, $40 for non-members Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 6:30 pm to 10:00 pm Instructor: Elizabeth Nathanson, Ph.D., Muhlenberg College When it was released in 2006, Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette divided and baffled audiences and critics. The crowd at Cannes reportedly booed the film! And yet, in the two decades since its release, it has been celebrated as one of the director’s most bold and beloved films. This biopic depicts the marriage and lavish experiences of the eponymous teen bride in the heyday of the French monarchy. Marie Antoinette is rich with set design and costumes, offering up a picture of the French court as one of decadence and frivolity, all while inviting viewers to consider the film as a class critique of elite worlds. In this seminar, we will consider how and why Marie Antoinette represents the historical past in such impressionistic and even “postmodern” ways. We will discuss the film’s use of a pop music soundtrack and extravagant fashion design to present an anachronistic representation of the queen and her court. The seminar will address how the film is, in many ways, a depiction of celebrity, and we will explore how it uses and diverges from the tropes of the biopic to do so. Finally, we will consider the lead figure herself, Marie (played by Kirsten Dunst) and how this film contributes to Coppola’s broader reflections on the nature of girlhood and adolescence.