Sofia Coppola Breaks My Heart in the Wrong Direction

Lost in Translation is my favourite film. Has been for a while. So watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette with Ana felt like a reasonable follow-up—educational framing aside, I was genuinely curious what she’d do with Versailles. I tried hard to like it. I really did.

The first half is essentially a loop—Groundhog Day with corsets, the same sequence of rooms and ceremonies and anxious negotiations over whether she’d finally lose her virginity. Ana fell asleep after an hour. I held on, somewhat bravely, waiting for the film to declare itself. It never did. The ending didn’t arrive so much as the film just stopped, and I sat there genuinely confused about what the mostly positive reviews had been responding to. The music was great in places. That’s what I’ve got.

I slept well in Ana’s bed afterward. Irina’s sounds in the night woke me a few times—strange and sweet in equal measure. In the morning Ana showed me childhood photos of herself, actually very cute, and she walked me to the train station. Napoleon next.