the saddest part of this movie

1: In real life, historically, the puppy thing we don't know about. The French loved dogs. Austrians I don't know. Marie Antoinette was only 14 or 15 when she came to Versailles, and there's no way of knowing if she even owned a dog. Most likely she never had a dog in the palace of Vienna (Schonnbrunn) but was given a dog at Versailles where there were so many. The French kings at Versailles had dogs for hunting and at Versailles today you can even tour the Salle de Chiens or Dog Room where the dogs would enter after a hunt.

2: The affair with Count Axel Fersen of Sweden may not have happened at all. We don't know the real truth. It's only a theory and a rumor, it was never proven true. There is no evidence. No written letters and nothing but people's gossiping 200 years later. They met in public settings - at a masked ball, at court functions and always in the presence of many people. The Queen had very little privacy and all eyes were on her. There is no way she was alone enough with Fersen to have an affair. Some say that Fersen fathered her first son but that's also never been proven. He met her only now and then in visits to Versailles but then again so did many other equally impressive people including Thomas Jefferson. Fersen was a sort of representative of Sweden and he was a friend of the royal family but nothing indicates that he and Marie were intimate. He rescued her from the Tuileries Palace when she was prisoner but he also rescued her husband and the kids so it was more of a loyal friend helping out the royal French family he was friends with.

3: The truest saddest part was that it was the most terribly performed by the cast. Kirsten is lousy. She has no depth and personality to her part. She is just playing dress up. She looks and acts like she's in the wrong movie. Jason Schwartzman is dead in this movie, has only like 4 lines and sucks big time. This movie really needed better writing for each character. It's a shame they spent so much on costumes and on filming in Versailles that they forgot to invest in good writing and acting.

^agreed, at first I thought Kirsten Dunst was completely miscast. she doesn't have the regal look, like say Judi Dench or Julie Andrews (both older I know) that I'd expect you'd need to play a queen, but that was sort of the point. Marie Antoinette was so young and doe eyed when she came to versailles. she didn't really know much about politics and really only cared about having fun, like any teenager would. I couldn't imagine being thirteen or fourteen or whatever she was, and having people stand around you waiting for resolutions to conflicts and producing children. that being said, any scene with Marie Antoinette and her mother's letter's were pretty sad, and her nephew's birth. Saddest scene for me though would be the riots around her house, with people breaking in and she's hiding in the basement with her children and her husband, who's literally standing guard in front of them.

"You know I've always reminded myself of Grace Kelly" ~ Jenna Maroney