How Marie Antoinette Won Over a New Generation

At the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette was met with scathing reviews. Critics called it too frilly, too feminine and too full of frocks, and objected to its anachronistic indie rock songs. The film, which cost $US40 million, failed at the box office. "That was equated with not being serious," Coppola recalls of the reception.

Twenty years later, the film is regarded as one of the best films of this century, with its glamorous visuals and needle drops now part of 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.

Coppola's own commemoration is a documentary: Making Marie Antoinette, assembled from 80 hours of footage shot by her mother, Eleanor, who died in 2024. Eleanor's footage sat largely unused until the family gathered during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Together, they began shaping the material into a feature, with Sofia finishing it after her mother's death with editor Aaron Matthews. Eleanor's journal entries, read by Diane Lane, reveal her wistfulness about her own creative ambitions. "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," says Sofia.

The documentary shows the exhausting work behind the film: long days, costume changes, wig washings and a sick director. But it also captures the Coppola family at work, with brother Roman as second unit director, cousin Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI, and father Francis Ford Coppola visiting. Sofia says she was more comfortable with her mother there than with a random crew. "It was much more comfortable to have my mom there than a random crew," she says. "I could be much more vulnerable with her."

Watching the documentary, Sofia admits she cringes at her younger self. "To see, like, the way I talked. When I wasn't as assured in saying what I wanted." But seeing her mother is still reassuring. "It's really moving for me to be with her and her perspective," she says. "This is a tribute to her work."