Anyway, this movie was based on the new evidence about Marie in which she is no longer portrayed as a monster, but as a normal girl. Even the "Let them eat cake" line is apparently bullshit.
Kirsten Dunst whom I despise due to her off camera personality plays Marie and she "fits" the role perfectly. I'm not saying this was the greatest acting performance, I'm saying that it wasn't a stretch for her to play Marie.
Marie is portrayed here as a nice girl who is sent to France without really understanding the customs and ways of the French elite. It's very understanding that she hates how uptight the French are when it comes to rank and rules for how to behave. Marie is young and kind of stupid. She's all about her friends and what people think of her. She wastes money and really has no concern for world events.
Basically, Marie is a young woman.
To be honest, the film is not completely, eye gougingly terrible nor is Kirsten Dunst's performance. However, the direction is that bad and then some. Sophia Coppola needs to go back to directing school.
Pretend you're watching a serious historically based period piece only to see a masked ball in which people are dancing to techno/pop. Even worse, anyone remember the Family Guy where they made fun of 80s movies by having a small clip where everyone is working on rebuilding a bar with cheesey music playing...well, this film has that too and the song is "I want Candy". No, really.
The movie is 2 hours long and an hour of it could have been dropped without missing even a hint of a subplot, let alone a critical piece of the story. Scene after scene ran long or had no point whatsoever to the overall storyline. Even my wife, who liked the movie, said that it had no flow.
Overall, there is a good story here somewhere about a very misunderstood figure from history. Unfortunately, this movie doesn't tell her story well at all. If you're female, gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), or like period movies, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this, but you won't love it. All other need not bother unless trying to score points with a loved (or just liked for the moment) one.
5 out of 10. Horrible direction, "eh" acting, but an interesting story.
P.S. The part you'll really want to see...It's not shown.