“Letting everyone down would be my greatest unhappiness.”

Join us on Sunday, July 14 for a Bastille Day screening of Sofia Coppola’s luscious, cream-puff period piece MARIE ANTOINETTE, starring Kirsten Dunst in a pitch-perfect performance about the life of the infamous Queen of France. Released in 2006, this lavish re-telling is notable for being the first non-French production to be permitted license to screen on the grounds of Versailles; it also took home Oscar gold for its phenomenal costumes and features a completely anachronistic (aka “magnifique”) soundtrack inclusive of everything from Aphex Twin to The Strokes to Air.  Coppola’s narrative is focused very much on Marie Antoinette herself, an Austrian Princess whose marriage into the French Royal family would make her a Queen before becoming a symbol for the wanton extravagance of the epoch and its monarchy, who was ultimately stripped of her riches and finery, imprisoned and beheaded by her own subjects during the French Revolution. With Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Asia Argento, Milly Shannon, Jaime Dornan, Marianne Faithfull, Danny Huston.

“In adapting Lady Antonia Fraser’s biography of the eighteenth-century queen, writer-director Coppola threw out a lot of things, including the politics, most of the French Revolution and Marie’s beheading after dismissing the ving peasants with “Let them eat cake,” a line she never utters in this movie. But what Coppola does focus on provokes and fascinates… No one captures girlhood on film better than Coppola. By tossing in American slang, rock music (New Order and Bow Wow Wow) and eclectic acting styles, she’s crashing through the barriers of centuries and stuffy Hollywood biopics to give us a palpable sense of Marie moving through the temptations of flesh and spirit before history boxed her in. With lyrical intelligence and scrappy wit, Coppola creates a luscious world to get lost in. It’s a pleasure.” (Rolling Stone)

“Giddy, girly and defiantly revisionist.” (Times UK)

“…an ambitious, affecting, truly distinctive piece of work, albeit one that will tell you more about 1780s footwear than about the causes and effects of the French Revolution.” (Independent)

“All of Sofia Coppola’s films, and this one most of all, use locations to define the lives of the characters. Allowed complete access to Versailles, she shows a society as single-mindedly devoted to the care and feeding of Marie Antoinette, as a beehive centers on its queen.” (Roger Ebert)

Sunday, July 14
Movie 9:30 pm *Approximate start time.

Advance tickets $10.50 HERE | $12.50 at the door

Why not make it a Bastille Day Double Bill with AMELIE at 7:00 pm?

Double Bill Tickets $14 advance HERE | $16 at the door.

*Minors permitted in the balcony!
**Rio Theatre Groupons and passes good for any single film. Please redeem at the door.

MARIE ANTOINETTE (Sofia Coppola, 2006 / 123 mins / PG) The retelling of France’s iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette. From her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to her reign as queen at 19 and ultimately the fall of Versailles.