Dunst puts fresh face on ‘Marie Antoinette’

updated 4:17 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2006

LOS ANGELES - Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst want to reacquaint the world with the beheaded queen that history has painted as a spoiled rich girl whose extravagance helped ignite the French Revolution.

Dunst takes the title role in writer-director Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” depicting her not as a heartless hedonist ignoring the misery of the masses but as a lost teen who was sold into an arranged marriage and ill-prepared for the stifling protocol of court life.

The fanciful narrative blends 18th century costumes and settings with a wild blend of music, including contemporary pop songs by Bow Wow Wow, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Adapted from Antonia Fraser’s book “Marie Antoinette: The Journey,” the film centers on Marie’s years at the French palace at Versailles, where she was dispatched at age 14 from her native Austria to wed Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), heir to France’s throne.

The cast includes Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Marianne Faithful, Steve Coogan and Asia Argento.

Coppola got permission to shoot at Versailles, where much of the story actually took place, including Marie’s dramatic obeisance to a French mob that came to confront the royal family.

Premiering at last spring’s Cannes Film Festival, “Marie Antoinette” received a mix of praise and disapproval from French audiences that still have harsh feelings about the queen and may have disliked the idea of an American filmmaker tinkering with her story.

The film is a reunion for Coppola, 35, an Academy Award winner for the screenplay of her 2003 hit “Lost in Translation,” and Dunst, 24, who starred in the director’s debut feature, “The Virgin Suicides.” The filmmaker’s father, Francis Ford Coppola, was an executive producer on “Marie Antoinette,” which opens Friday.

Coppola and Dunst sat down with The Associated Press to talk about their latest collaboration.

AP: Did you have a long-standing interest in Marie Antoinette?

Coppola: I always liked that period of France, the 18th century, the white wigs. I always thought that visually it was an interesting, fun period. But I never really knew anything about Marie Antoinette except for kind of the cliche — evil, decadent queen. But then I read Antonia Fraser’s book. That’s what got me interested in doing a film about this, just to show the real person behind all the myths.

AP: Kirsten, what had you known about Marie?

Dunst: I’d learned what I learned in school. I never really had tried to take the time to look at a historical figure in a personal way before. When you’re in school, you don’t. You just memorize dates and wars.

Coppola: They don’t teach us very much about foreign history in school.

Dunst: They don’t. It was a small paragraph in my book, and then it was more about Napoleon and what happened after. Just like, OK, that was the queen that was beheaded.

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