The cake wasn't the problem with Marie Antoinette

I've finally got round to watching Sofia Coppola's film about Marie Antoinette, and I must admit I quite enjoyed it. I had no high hopes as I'm not a fan of the lady (Marie Antoinette, that is - I have no views on Coppola) and I gloomily foresaw a whitewash. It's true the film is more for than against the sorely tried - and trying - queen, but it's not too overdone, and what's more, it wisely ends in 1789, when the king and queen are forced by an angry mob to move from Versailles to Paris. In other words, long before the revolution got in full swing and heads started to roll.

When the film was released many reviews complained about it ending where it did, and at the time I sympathised with them. A film about Marie Antoinette without a guillotine in it? Come on! Now, though, I can see the advantage of stopping short in 1789. True, you lose the scenes where the ex-queen is separated from her son in prison, where sick-making allegations are made about her in court and where she is driven proudly to her death. All touching stuff. On the other hand, you don't have to explain the fact that she handed over France's military secrets to Austria.

Anyone who tries to defend Marie Antoinette starts out by pointing out that she never said "let them eat cake". Which is true, she didn't. Then, they continue, she had absolutely no part in "the affair of the necklace" which made her so unpopular in her own time. Nope, she did not. I've read two accounts of "the affair of the necklace", both too tangled to be any fun, but one person who was not mixed up in it was Marie Antoinette. I believe I've also heard it said that she did not play at being shepherdess at Petit Trianon. I'm a little less inclined to take this as read, but let's face it, even if she did it's hardly a great crime - shepherdesses of the Bo Peep variety were "in" at the time and no-one thought for a moment they had anything in common with real herders of cattle. In the end, though, Marie Antoinette wasn't executed for a silly quote, or for a diamond necklace, or for playing shepherdess. She was executed for treason, and she committed it.

By dwelling on Marie Antoinette's pre-revolutionary life, Coppola's film can concentrate on the allegations made against her at that time - i.e. that she was very extravagant. The film doesn't deny this: many scenes are taken up with the princess's and later the queen's spending sprees. It does list a number of extenuating circumstances, though, like her youth (her eighteenth birthday party takes place about halfway into the film) and her troubles with her husband who at first didn't know how to go about making her pregnant. I read Stefan Zweig's biography of Marie Antoinette once upon a time, and he really went to town on the sufferings of the poor girl who had to endure Louis "tiring himself out on her young body" to no avail night after night. The initial marital problems are a little less graphically depicted here, but the film makes a point which the gallant Zweig missed: the way the court blamed Marie Antoinette for not trying harder to get Louis off the mark, and the strain that must have been for a teenager had no way of knowing anything about seduction techniques. Also, we are duly informed that the real drain on the nation's finances was not the queen's hats and shoes but backing the Americans against the English in the War of Independence.

It's not an action-packed film, more of a mood piece in very pretty surroundings. The clothes and the food look exquisite - the cakes especially, ironically enough. The stifling court atmosphere is well captured: in one scene, the queen fantasises girlishly about her lover von Fersen amid disjointed court gossip which you really couldn't make head or tail of if you tried. The queen's best friends, the sweet princess de Lamballe and the sluttish but fun duchess de Polignac, are nicely individualised. All the same, if I hadn't had any interest in the revolutionary period and in seeing how the royal family got along before they ran into worse trouble than back-stabbing each other, I would probably have been bored - the film is pretty slow.

Kirsten Dunst is charming as ever in the lead role, but I couldn't help thinking that the "poor giddy little thing who doesn't know what she's doing" card was overplayed. By 1789, Marie Antoinette was thirty-four, and unfortunately she no longer took a back seat in political matters. The film shows her proclaiming gravely, when she is advised to take shelter abroad: "My place is at the king's side." Honey, it would have been better for the king if your place had been anywhere but at his side.