Actress Vicky Krieps and director Marie Kreutzer shake up the romantic Romy Schneider version of Sisi with “Corsage”.
“It’s incredibly interesting how different the Sisi biographies from the different epochs are. Time also determines this character,” explained Austrian director Marie Kreutzer (44) two weeks ago after the screening of her new film “Corsage” as the opening film at the Munich Film Festival. What was meant were the books that she had studied about Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria-Hungary (1837-1898) in preparation for the shooting.
However, this sentence also fits perfectly with the historical drama that she and her team have created. “In 2022 you can tell Sisi differently,” Kreutzer continued. And in fact, her Sisi has absolutely nothing to do with the romantic, kitschy three-part interpretation of the story by Romy Schneider (1938-1982) and director Ernst Marischka (1893-1963) from the 1950s, which fans every year at Christmas time sweetened. Although the older Romy Schneider would probably have liked to have played in “Corsage” to finally get rid of the image of the cute empress.
Instead, we see the Luxembourgish and internationally successful actress Vicky Krieps (38, “Das Boot”, “A Most Wanted Man”, “The Silken Thread”) and she does her job excellently. She plays the multifaceted, multilingual, extremely sporty empress in her 40s, who is driven by an imposed obsession with beauty, so naturally and fascinatingly that her Sisi face is not quickly forgotten.
Incidentally, Vicky Krieps, who was awarded the actor prize for her Sisi at the world premiere of “Corsage” in Cannes in 2022, was also the inspiration for this film. On the stage of the Isarphilharmonie she told about a friend with whom she was allowed to watch the “Sissi” films “every Christmas” – at home she wasn’t allowed to because her mother didn’t want her to watch princess films.
The girlfriend, who was around 14 at the time, also discovered a biography with said friend. “And I read it and thought: Huh? Something is wrong here. At some point I asked myself: Why hasn’t someone made a film about it? That might be interesting. And then I suggested it.”
That’s what “Corsage” is about
Christmas 1877: It is the 40th birthday of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Krieps). In her role as a representative at the side of her husband Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichmeister, 42), she is not allowed to express any opinions, but must remain the beautiful young empress forever. To meet this expectation, she adheres to a rigid schedule of starvation, exercise, grooming, and daily waist measurements. But Elisabeth is an inquisitive and vivacious woman whose resistance to her larger-than-life image and expectations is growing and who no longer wants to live in a courtly corset…
Modern themes and historical details
A corset is a piece of shapewear clothing and the title already indicates the modern problem that the historical empress was already confronted with back then. Having to be skinny at all costs meant that Sisi subsisted on two wafer-thin slices of orange while the palace guests ate lavishly. Numerous sources show that even then she was tormented by challenges such as eating disorders, depressive episodes, crises of meaning, affairs and the unattainable image of the perfect mother.
Based on the historically well-documented biography of the famous Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, the filmmaker Marie Kreutzer unveils the monarch’s fragile state of mind layer by layer. It doesn’t just show her as a suffering woman or a victim, but rather gives her the narrative of a fearless, radical, sometimes ice-cold woman who chain smokes, swears and sometimes shows the middle finger. “Sisi was the first victim of the celebrity nonsense that we experience today,” summarizes Vicky Krieps. She realized that as soon as she read the script.
Speaking of the middle finger, not everything in “Corsage” is historically precise, artistic freedom was also very important to the filmmakers. “I studied film in Vienna and have always lived according to the principle: learn the rules in order to break them. And of course I researched for a long time, but at some point I let go of it and then used the facts rather than trying to implement what exactly happened.” But that’s always difficult with historical material anyway, “because like my esteemed colleague Jessica Hausner [49, Wiener Regisseurin, Mitglied der Oscar-Akademie, Red.] once said: ‘We weren’t all there’ and can’t verify it. There are no paparazzi photos or interviews from that time, just a few paintings or texts.”
Also worth mentioning in this context is the Austrian actor Manuel Ruby (43), who embodies Sisi’s cousin and confidante Ludwig II (1845-1886) in the film as an extremely friendly, peaceful, funny and open-minded person. So also different from the usual image today.
Theatrical release on July 7th
“Corsage” starts in cinemas in Germany and Austria on July 7th. By the way, fans of the “Sissi” trilogy (1955, 1956, 1957) can confidently watch the film, because apart from a few details, one interpretation and style has nothing to do with the other. Or as Uschi Glas (78) put it at the film festival premiere in an interview with spot on news:
“Of course I know the old films and have seen them so often that I don’t watch them anymore. But I think they have their place and are simply classics. You shouldn’t weigh these old films against newer productions. That’s just it It was a different time and of course it was a smash hit back then. That’s unique.”