This Marie Antoinette Has Her Head in a Totally Different Space

Coppola wanted them in colors and textures -- a macaroon palette of pink, gold and pistachio -- that looked good enough to eat. In the film, the dresses are almost like characters themselves, designed by two-time Oscar winner Milena Canonero ("Chariots of Fire," "Barry Lyndon"), who used the 18th century as her inspirational template but then went way contempo.

What impressed Coppola was the fact that with the death of Louis XV (played by a randy Rip Torn), Versailles became a palace run by teenagers. "What struck me was how young they were," Coppola said. Imagine if your parents had suddenly died of smallpox while you were in high school and you could have all the keggers you wanted. That is the Coppola Versailles.

Marie Antoinette enters the court like "a kid on the first day at a new school," the director says. And there is definitely a "Mean Girls" vibe to the film, as the goofy-grinning Dunst enters a royal court populated by hostile, powder-wigged fops obsessed with gossipy back-stabbing, uttering lines like: "I wonder how long she'll last." Or better: "I love your hair! What's going on there?"

Marie seeks solace in small dogs (poor petite Mops!), a Seine of champagne, gambling, diamonds, shopping, opera, sunrises and the attentions of her gay hairdresser (no sex) and the hunky Swedish Count Fersen (sex, with white stockings and a fan).

"I wanted to make them in this bubble," Coppola says. So when the inevitable day comes and the bread-hungry mob arrives on their front lawn, "you're as surprised as they are."

Or are you?

Versailles was, to our modern eyes, very weird, and Coppola shows court life of the 1770s. The young king and queen, for example, were considered a kind of performance art duo, like John and Yoko. When they ate, the aristocrats of the day stood around and watched. Like Court TV. When, finally, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a potential heir, her boudoir is filled with spectators, who watch the action between Dunst's trembling thighs as if it were a closely fought soccer match.

The British comic and actor Steve Coogan, who in the film plays the Count Mercy D'Argenteau, the ambassador from Austria, said, "I think it shows that Sofia is true to her voice. I've seen the film, and it's consistent with all the qualities that make her films great in the past. People who like Sofia Coppola will love this film. People who don't won't, but then they're not really on her radar anyway."

Dunst, still with strawberry-red hair from making "Spider-Man 3," a color that undeniably looks better on screen than up close, defends the film by saying, "It's more of an auteur look at it. Not a history lesson." (She confesses that what she knew about the French Revolution before this project was a paragraph back in high school.)

In one scene in the movie, Marie complains of the ritual viewing of her morning toilet. "This is ridiculous," she says, naked, as she is dressed.

But no. As her maid of honor reminds her: "This, Madame, is Versailles."