TMS Movie Review: Corsage
(Film AG / IFC Films)
Way back in 2006, when Sofia Coppola followed up her hugely successful Lost in Translation (2003) with the polarizing Marie Antoinette, a lot of movie audiences struggled to appreciate it. Why is Sofia’s husband’s band, Phoenix, playing in one scene? Did we just see a shot of Converse sneakers in Marie’s closet? Why are the actors performing with American accents? At the time, I didn’t really have much of an opinion on Marie Antoinette since I wasn’t a big costume drama buff to begin with. But after seeing a handful of the period pieces released in the past couple of years with similar fictionalizations and anachronisms, I’m both amused and [slightly frustrated] as a Sofia fan. The most recent and obvious example is Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, a period drama centered on Empress Elisabeth of Austria starring Vicky Krieps.
Rather than be a dramatized history lesson, Corsage opts for a character study and commentary on gender politics through the eyes of Elisabeth (Krieps) in 1878. We see that as she reaches 40, she’s on the verge of an existential crisis because she’s now getting too old and ‘weathered’ for the pretty socialite reputation she grew in her youth. The royal lady and her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph I (Florian Teichtmeister), have become distant in recent years, and their eyes are wandering elsewhere. The empress has a complicated relationship with her son and oldest child, Rudolf (Aaron Friesz); while her very young daughter, Valerie (Rosa Hajjaj) is becoming conscious of her mother’s neurosis. Colin Morgan and Manuel Rubey appear as real-life historical figures, Cpt. George Middleton and King Ludwig II of Bavaria, two of Elisabeth’s possible lovers in Corsage.
(Film AG / IFC Films)
As expected with the Marie Antoinette comparisons, Kreutzer features modern songs on the Corsage soundtrack, including covers of Marianne Faithfull’s ‘As Tears Go By’ and Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night;’ as well as phrases and discussions that come across more contemporary than accurate to their setting. Besides Antoinette, Corsage also shares a lot of DNA with Pablo Larraín’s Princess Di piece Spencer (2021), in that it focuses on a specific aspect of the legendary protagonist, and the filmmaker does what they want with it. As someone not familiar with Austrian history and my main exposure to Elisabeth is through Ernst Marischka’s Sissi films starring Romy Schneider from the late 1950s—which I naturally assumed were heavy on the artistic license anyway—I think I can still guess which parts of Corsage re-wrote history, especially the fantasy-like ending. The scenes where we see Sissi visiting the local hospital to support both physically injured and mentally disturbed patients show the royal figure as human and compassionate; but Kreutzer also doesn’t glorify her either, reminding viewers of her privilege. When Elisabeth ends a visit to her sister’s castle badly, we get close ups of the pastries and tea in front of her as she sulks. When Sissi and FJ disagree on the name of a servant during an argument, it’s a reminder they aren’t even paying enough attention to their own staff to remember their names.
Ironically, I didn’t care much for the really fanfic-adjacent parts where Elisabeth meets with the inventor of the ‘moving picture,’ Louis le Prince (Finnegan Oldfield), which just feel too on-the-nose and blatant. Similarly a scene where a party-goer casually conceives “a machine that works the opposite of a heater.” The sequences are just cheekily shot and come off ham-fisted like, “hehe, look at these people having no idea what filmmaking and air-conditioning are!” The most alarming development is probably a doctor prescribing opium to Sissi on top of her eating disorder. But, if you can turn on your suspension of disbelief regarding accuracy or don’t know much about Austrian royals; an aging, aroused, drugged out Empress Elisabeth living her best life during her twilight years in Corsage may or may not sound interesting to you. Krieps is on top of her game again after a baffling step back in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old (2021) and the aesthetics of Corsage are natural eye candy. Regarding the Sofia Coppola influence, I’ll just end this review reminding how once more, she was ahead of the curve on a popular trend; and is now barely getting acknowledgment for it.