2026 marks twenty years since Sofia Coppola’s indelible film, Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to boos. Coppola told The Guardian right after that initial premiere, “I think it’s better to get a reaction…than a mediocre response.” Don’t get me wrong, people applauded, too. But the sensationalization of that event led to a dismissive attitude during the film’s initial release.
But while the ancien régime might’ve still been a sore subject for a few French critics, over the years, Marie Antoinette has garnered a massive cult following consisting mostly of teenage girls. While most of Sofia Coppola’s films, such as The Virgin Suicides and Priscilla, have a similar devotion, there is none quite so popular and long-lasting as Marie Antoinette. The dreamy visuals, the modern, ambient dialogue, the decadence of every shot, and the loneliness of the protagonist, all combine to make a film that resonates with the experience of girlhood despite being set in a world that no longer exists. Marie Antoinette, in her gilded cage, overspends on wigs, shoes, cakes, all to fill the void of the isolation she feels in a foreign country where her only duty is to have sons. While most of us aren’t in that exact same situation, the isolation and loneliness inevitable in growing up and finding your place in the world, exacerbated by womanhood, can be deeply felt by the intimacy in which Coppola films Dunst in this film. The shots of her alone and frustrated in a beautiful room are deeply felt, the pressure continuously rising.
The most striking thing about the film, the reason it has such a legacy, are the visuals. Coppola was uniquely allowed to film in Versailles where all these events really took place, and this accessibility allowed her and the film’s crew to portray Marie Antoinette in as accurate and decadent a setting as possible.
Though accuracy is not necessarily what the film was striving for. While the costumes are actually some of the more true-to-the-era of the elements featured, the soundtrack is a poppy, punkish confection of Bow Wow Wow, the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, and the Strokes. These don’t take away from the historicity, at least in my experience. Instead, they amplify Marie Antoinette’s emotions as the film goes on. The focus on Kirsten Dunst’s cherubic face as she dreams of her lover Axel von Fersen (Jamie Dornan in his film debut) wouldn’t be nearly as sweeping without the Strokes’ ‘What Ever Happened?’ playing over it, nor would the final image of Marie Antoinette’s empty, destroyed bedroom be nearly as haunting without the dark, dramatic drums of the Cure’s ‘All Cats are Grey.’ And during the rococo equivalent of a shopping montage set to Bow Wow Wow’s ‘I Want Candy’, a purple pair of Converse can be spotted in the background. After all, Marie Antoinette was only eighteen when she became queen.
The movie is all over social media; in TikTok edits, in t-shirts of stills from the film, in Pinterest inspo boards for decor. There’s a photo frequently reposted on Pinterest of Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman in full costume listening to music on an Apple computer with wired earbuds in. The contrast between the old and new is humorous but also adds a relatable quality, and the sheer amount of behind the scenes photos of actors smoking, flipping off the camera, and eating modern snacks makes it seem like “the past” wasn’t so different after all.
But twenty years after the film was booed, it cemented a lasting legacy. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London recently had an exhibition on the fashion legacy of Marie Antoinette, which featured the movie as part of that legacy. There’s soon to be a theatrical re-release of the film in theaters starting October 23, newly remastered in 4K. What is perhaps even more exciting, however, is that Mubi will be releasing a brand new documentary, Making Marie Antoinette, alongside the re-release. Taken from 80 hours of footage shot by Eleanor Coppola, Sofia’s mother, during the original production, it follows Sofia as she directs such an extensive cast and crew in such an iconic setting.
I remember seeing the movie for the first time when I was fourteen; it made me feel close to an era that I had never known. I’d recently finished reading Antonia Fraser’s biography of Marie Antoinette, which inspired the film, and had seen the movie all over “aesthetic” Instagram accounts. It was oddly relatable; the film doesn’t beg us to sympathize with a regime that hoarded obscene amounts of wealth and was largely ignorant to the plight of the peasantry, but it captures the melancholy of living a privileged life that’s pretty on the surface but having no one who really understands you, and being forced into a role in which you are unprepared by little fault of your own.
Twenty years later, Marie Antoinette is finally being re-assessed to praise and adoration. When I watch it, I’m instantly drawn in by the angry, adolescent soundtrack, and I can almost feel the flutter of fans in the breeze, the scent of powder caking one’s face, the hush of beautiful dresses brushing the floor, and the blissful ignorance that all good things must end.