Feminist Filmmaking the Marie Antoinette Way

I have a very long, complicated, tortured affair of opinions about Sofia Coppola. This is a common malady, as far as I can discern. It seems that very few film critics can pinpoint exactly why they like or dislike (or revile or worship) her. In the wake of the opening of her Marie Antoinette, I started thinking about the matter again. And while I definitely didn't crack the entire enigma that is Sofia, I think I managed to work out two facts: 1) I don't like her filmmaking style, and 2) why I don't like her filmmaking style.

[As a quick disclaimer, however - I have not yet seen Marie Antoinette. I think, in general, it's a good policy to not talk too much about things I haven't experienced; but in this case, I'm largely discussing the aura and phenomena of the film, and its director's past films, as opposed to a straight-up critique of the film alone. So I'm giving myself a pass this time.]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Sofia Coppola owes a great amount of her success to her lineage. Having Francis Ford as a father undoubtedly gave her a head start on learning how the make films, not to mention bestowed upon her some of the best networking opportunities available. It's probably not worth harping on this overmuch, despite the fact it always has bugged me, and always will. But it does set the stage for a character very much like the historical persona of Marie Antoinette herself: privileged, distant, and concerned with matters internal rather than external. The heroines of Coppola's first two films, Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides, followed similar patterns. It's almost impossible to not loop them together as a fairly accurate and cohesive representation of Coppola's experience, values, and perspective. That is, if Coppola is in truth a filmmaker who is capable of accomplishing such representation.

And she most certainly is. Coppola is extremely talented, she has incredible taste, and a finely-tuned instinct about how to fit the various aspects of a film's puzzle pieces together into an impressive whole. Her films are beautiful, exquisite at times. Delicate, fragile, understated, and often misunderstood. As are her heroines. As she herself is. And this is where we drag in the charge of feminism.

Sofia Coppola is one of the most well-known and famous women working behind the cameras in Hollywood today - and she became well-known for that work, which is different from a famous actress who one day takes up directing or producing. She has an Oscar for screenwriting from the Academy that has given very few such awards to women (and absolutely none to female directors, thus far). Her films to date, (including early short films like Lick the Star) have all featured female protagonists making their way through a world often overwhelming and unjust towards young women. On top of this, she herself is a model of femininity - pretty, stylish, demure, for whom Marc Jacobs has even christened a handbag. She's a real-life philosopher-princess. She's a natural candidate for feminist heroine. And reviewers have hailed her as such (here and here, just for example). But I have my doubts that her style of feminist filmmaking is doing women, or film in general, any favors.

Let me recycle some of the terms of description I've already used: distant, fragile, demure, understated, misunderstood. Concerned with matters internal at the expense of matters external, and with the almost overwhelming pressures stacked up against women. The choice to make a sympathetic film about Marie Antoinette is a very telling one. It makes Marie into a victim. It makes her wronged and helpless and lost. And it pushes to the forefront the idea that Coppola has essentially been toying with all along - the idea of womanhood as victimhood.

At this point, we're still in valid feminist territory with this conclusion. She could be seen as a feminist heroine for drawing these parallels and holding them up for examination. But my question is - what's the next step? What should we women do about it? Instead of offering solutions, it seems as if Coppola is glamorizing the problems. She depicts women caught in overpowering life circumstances and unjust power structures great and small, and lays the blame and responsibility of change on the powers that be rather than the women themselves.

Feminist filmmaking? Not for me. I want to see women on film clear-minded and actively engaged in the world around them, not lost waifs in search of an audience. I want to see women on film as agents of change, not victims of fate. And I want to see women making films who are dedicated to leading the revolution, not willing to be swept away by it. If Sofia Coppola grows into this - fantastic, she'll have my full attention. But otherwise - I think it's time to keep looking elsewhere.

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