Over the top

From its very opening scene this film is exquisitely, lavishly gorgeous and on and on it goes, being exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous — oh, the frocks, the shoes, the petit fours, the piled-high candies! — until you start thinking, enough with the exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous already. How much exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous can a movie-goer be expected to take? Let’s see some heads getting chopped off! But on and on it goes — oh, the fountains, the chandeliers, the oak-lined vistas, the sumptuous, gilded rooms …honestly, at certain points you feel as if you’re being beaten to death by a late 18th-century copy of Hello! magazine. And on and on it still goes — oh, the parties, the Moët, the spectacularly ornate wigs, the exorbitant spending binges, the fabrics, the silks, the tassels! — and on and on until almost the very last minute when, suddenly, a revolting, torch-bearing mob pitches up, Marie Antoinette is forced to leave Versailles and that’s it.