- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
For an exorbitant 240 million dollars Coppola loses her translation of Marie-Antoinette out of sheer indifference to this victim of the ancient royal practice of sex traffic. Arriving from the court of Vienna to that of Versailles because of a forced marriage Marie-Antoinette knows at 14 that her womb is heavily invested by strong political interests. As the next
seven years pass without conceiving, every menstruation becomes her ghastly reminder of the spectre of eviction.
Coppola makes nothing of this, more fascinated by the odd idea of differences between the ways of the court in Vienna and Versailles. Far more chilling are the similarities.
The big love of this loveless life, Swedish count von Fersen,is translated by Coppola as some insipid youth. He was the very opposite: a handsome mighty package of testosterone electrifying as a rock star oozing of venereal disease among his groupies.
And by the way that golden Versailles had no sanitation. It was a well established part of the perfumed rigours
to faire pipi let alone defecate in staircases and behind the curtains. An act of protest? Not very likely.
