THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
The idea of making a film about Elisabeth of Austria came to Marie Kreutzer from actress Vicky Krieps. The two women had worked together on the director’s second feature film, We Used to Be Cool (2016), and wanted to renew the experience. The director did not reject the proposal, she undertook research work which soon gave her the material on which she was going to want to write. This concerned the life of the Empress when she freed herself from protocol, traveled a lot, isolated herself. Marie Kreutzer found there a good opportunity to reverse the codes, to confront and make resonate, between them, the times.
Thus was developed Bodice, iconoclastic film (presented at Cannes in the Un certain regard category) which, to free its heroine from the shackles of the time, of her rank, of public opinion, does not hesitate to blast the conventions of historical film. The gesture, alas, provokes a feeling of deja vu. It also has the unfortunate effect of highlighting a statement that is already clear. This “decoration” deserved a less supported conduct. However, we owe him a proper burial of the fairy tale told to us, sixty-seven years ago, by the Austrian director Ernst Marischka.
Let us remember her trilogy: Elisabeth of Wittelsbach in the infant features of Romy Schneider, picked up in her green Bavaria by François-Joseph Ier, leaving for Austria to live with its emperor in a postcard palace. This pastry cream version of Sissi’s early years, which spread well beyond the borders of Central Europe, imposed everywhere and permanently the image of an Empress of Austria and Hungary with a doll’s face, with a generous heart, in love with her husband and gently refractory to the constraints of the Viennese court.
acts of rebellion
An image that Marie Kreutzer’s film sends a thousand leagues underground. Which puts us in the mood from the first minutes: Christmas 1877, Elisabeth of Austria celebrates her fortieth birthday. Behind her, years of sacrifices, dietary asceticism, daily measurement of her size, on-call duty and imposed silence. In front of her: the obligation to redouble her efforts to try to keep her freshness and her fine silhouette, or the possibility of sending everything crashing down. It will be understood, it is this second option that the director has chosen, whose remarks are unfortunately weighed down by too many redundancies.
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