A fan girl's findings: insights into MA

"To say that this movie is historically irresponsible or politically suspect is both to state the obvious and to miss the point...beneath its highly decorated surface is an examination, touched with melancholy as well as delight, of what it means to live in a world governed by rituals of acquisition and display."

"We know how this story ends, and Ms. Coppola refrains from showing us the violent particulars, or from sentimentalizing her heroine’s fate, preferring to conclude on a quiet, restrained note that registers the loss of Marie’s world as touchingly as the rest of the film has acknowledged her folly, her confusion and her humanity."

A lonely petit four of a queen (NY Times review)

"Drift and dislocation are second nature to Coppola. They were the main themes of her previous films, The Virgin Suicides (also starring Dunst) and Lost in Translation.... Whatever the film's structural failings and historical gaps, it's great to see such a distinctive directorial vision coming out of Hollywood.... Few directors, of either sex, are capable of making a costume drama about 18th-century monarchs that feels so exasperatingly contemporary."

There’s something about Marie (Telegraph review)

"Coppola has created one of the most compellingly watchable historical dramas in recent cinema precisely by doing what her critics accuse her of doing; playing loose with the historical and temporal facts for the sake of making a good movie.... Coppola does what a good storyteller should do; She stays true to her subject as an artist by filtering the story through her own sensibility."

"Coppola does what any director in her right mind must do to make a very good movie; She empathizes deeply with her protagonist, finds a way to bring her audience into the queen's gilded cage and allows us to look into her unknowable heart."

(blog entry on The Back Row Manifesto.)