This story has been told before. Not much in Romi Schnider’s fairytale trilogy, nor in the many depictions of Empress Elisabeth of Austria lately released on screen or telly, but whenever cinema has dared into the intimacy of a woman jailed behind the bars of a prepackaged social position. Pablo Latraín’s Spencer comes to mind more than Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette—with which Corsage only shares an intriguing knack for anachronisms, if anything—but there something else in Marie Kreutzer’s take that makes it unique and worthy of revisiting the myth. It is an elusive quality that is largely nurtured by the candid beauty of Vicky Krieps and the ferocious intellectual unruliness of the character she and Kreutzer have created.
The cinematic identity Corsage is after, largely driven by the magnetic performance of Krieps, is reflected by its crude aesthetics and natural photography. Not the sumptuous warmness of the average costume drama, but cold spaces, peeling walls, austere environments, much more in the likes of—and even further—Yorgos Lanthimos’s audacious The Favourite.
From the score composed by Camille and her theme song She was, to a chamber version of As Tears Go By, which is actually not miles off the original interpretation of Marianne Faithful, and the dreamy Italy by Soap&Skin, on which a moustached Sissi dances in the end credits, the musical choices are phenomenal. The contrast they provide, the tone they set, the truth they gently reveal.
And yet, behind its many fascinating aspects, lies a film that is strangely—perhaps deliberately—unemphatic. What this really means, I am yet to figure out. As a matter of fact, its winking dryness proved quite addictive, but contrary to heroin, I am sure it will have some side effects. That’s all I want from art.
My riches can’t buy everything
I want to hear the children sing
All I hear is the sound
Of rain falling on the ground
I sit and watch
As tears go by
