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Marie Antoinette

Nobody has thought a story about a lavishing French queen can be so modern, American and feministic until Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette". Half through this movie, when I started to get a little bit tired of her luxurious life style and extravagant fashion taste, I couldn't help wondering: am I watching a lost episode of "Sex and the City"?

No, I don't have a problem with SATC. (In fact, I am a fan of the early seasons of it, i.e., before it was unfortunately transformed into a hyped-up soap opera by its own star, Sarah Jessica Parker.) The reason I brought up SATC was that it shared, I think, a lot of ingenious perspectives as well as self-obsessive ignorance with this movie. First of all, it was a bold artistic move to use rock music like Bow Wow Wow's iconic "I Want Candy" as the theme song while Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" was included so reluctantly. The moment I noticed that, I knew it was not going to be the movie you would think it was. Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette was so Americanized that it instantly reminded me Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde" or Paris Hilton in real life. It wasn't a sign of failure per se, but it surely was an interesting choice, to say the least. Frechmen don't like this movie for sure and I can understand.

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