Let Her Eat Cake

 

CORSAGE (A) - Vicky Krieps is a sight to behold in a period-piece crie-de-coeur about the 19th century Austrian Empress going through a mid-life crisis after turning 40. It is a feminist howl about caging women because they are beautiful and casting them aside as they age. Because it takes place 145 years ago its point is particularly poignant.

Krieps, who stumbled a bit last year in the fine "Hold Me Tight," captures the angst and mischief of Empress Elisabeth (Elise or Sisi), in a loveless marriage with the cranky Emperor Franz Josef (Florian Teichtmeister) since she was 16. That's not much of a bother to Elise, who has a crush on her riding instructor and runs off for a romp with a cousin in Hungary. She's fine with Franz Josef cavorting with a younger mistress. Elise made two heirs, a boy and a girl, so her job is done.

The Empress was a real figure (though the story here is fiction) and quite the celebrity, said to be one of the great beauties of Europe during that era. Here Elise is fidgety, unfulfilled. She starves herself to fit into her impossibly tight corsets (thus the title). Obviously, she is confined by more than just her undergarments. To get out of official duties, she will fake a fainting spell or send out an assistant masked by a veil to take her place at yet another public event. She fences, she smokes, she cuts off the locks she is famously known for and even gets a tattoo. She is entranced by the novelty of moving pictures.

She is a free spirit, and she yearns to live a life beyond that of a pretty figurehead. But she has been conditioned since she was a child to think of her self as just an object to be beheld. She tells the riding instructor that she loves to watch him look at her. It is her raison d'etre. That is the mini-tragedy here; she is trapped in her own myth and struggles to break free from the conventions. She aches to break out as a modern woman, and, frustrated, she takes it out on one of her assistants, blocking the servant from pursuing marriage with a true love.

Writer-director Marie Kreutzer, who has had a fairly undistinguished career until now, assembles this story masterfully, with insightful dialogue, spare storytelling and compelling imagery. Krieps is in full command, and Kreutzer lets her explore this unique character, an anomaly living a pampered life in a cruel world. Kreutzer adds inspired touches as little jolts for the viewer -- she has characters perform quaint versions of modern songs -- "Help Me Make It Through the Night" on ukelele and a lovely harp version of the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By."  The technique will probably remind you of Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" -- which used original recordings of pop and punk songs -- but "Corsage" is at the opposite spectrum from Coppola and Kirsten Dunst's shallow and ironically hip royal biography. This film offers authentic emotions and realistic relationships, a true polemic about the era. It's also not as flip as "The Favourite."

Everything works here. Just try to take your eyes off Krieps. She is magnetic, and her performance is as daring as her restless character is. Her suffering is quiet but compelling.

BONUS TRACKS

Here is Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," often covered, here by Willie Nelson:

 

Here is Marianne Faithfull with the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By":

 

Over the closing credits, Soap&Skin with "Italy":