Corsage

Vicky Krieps

Marie Kreutzer's Corsage puts a feminist spin on the life of Elizabeth, the last Empress of the Austria. The film focuses on Elizabeth in middle age experiencing a midlife crisis of identity. Stifled by court life and its attendant demands, Elizabeth is unable to forge a meaningful life even when she flees Vienna.

My main issue with the film is that I found it to be neither fish nor fowl. It is not humorous enough to be an effective satire, nor engaging enough for a drama. Kreutzer wants the film to be a middle fingered rebuke to the patriarchy and previous historical epics like the Sissi trilogy of the 1950s which starred Romy Schneider as the Empress. Corsage balances historic facts about the somewhat rebellious Empress, her smoking, tattoo, drug use and obsession with staying thin, with anachronisms that add little. Sissi is a bird in a gilded cage at the beginning of Corsage and that is what she remains till the end of the film. 

The film is a handsome one, as well appointed as the less subversive historical epics it mocks. It is generally well acted, Vicky Krieps as Elizabeth and Florian Teichmeister as Emperor Franz Joseph are affecting, but Corsage has little character development or narrative momentum. Its attempts to augur the oncoming Great War are feeble. Corsage is not a bad film, but it is a misguided one.