DIRECTOR: Marie Kreutzer
CAST: Vicky Krieps, Florian Teichtmeister, Katharina Lorenz, Jeanne Werner, Alma Hasun, Manuel Rubey, Finnegan Oldfield, Aaron Friesz, Rosa Hajjaj, Lilly Marie Tschörtner, Colin Morgan
RUNNING TIME: 112 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Krieps) struggles to maintain her public image…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
When it comes to depicting royalty on the screen, it seems that more dramatic liberties than usual are taken with such stories. Nobody truly knows what goes on behind the closed doors of royal palaces, so it’s often down to the writers to create fictional narratives based on public knowledge of the subject, which can sometimes distort the truth in the minds of those who can’t tell fact from fiction.
In the case of Marie Kreutzer’s highly idiosyncratic Corsage, though, it’s unlikely to attract as much division as something like The Crown when it comes to distorting the truth, because the Austrian filmmaker goes well out of her way at times to spell out that this is very much a fictional piece, putting it closer to factual fairy tales such as Spencer than anything. It is also, in its own way, an unusual piece: at once a bold and provocative piece of revisionist history, but also a deeply tragic and surprisingly relatable character study that just so happens to be about a key figure of European royalty.
That figure is Empress Elisabeth of Austria, whose tenure, which she shared alongside her husband Emperor Franz Joseph I throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, is recorded as the longest in the history of female rulers. In Kreutzer’s film, though, we pick up on Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) as she is about to turn forty, which for women of that era – particularly within high society and beyond – is practically an expiry date. As a woman known everywhere for her exemplary beauty, she initially struggles with the fact that most people, including her Emperor husband Franz (Florian Teichtmeister), aren’t as physically attracted to her as they once were, and so through small acts of rebellion Elisabeth attempts to put an unconventional spin on her legacy.
Since it plays around so much with historical knowledge about this person, Corsage shouldn’t be treated as an accurate biopic of Empress Elisabeth, but more so as a revisionist fairy tale that attempts to cast aside everything one knows about her and present her under a different lens. Kreutzer heavily plays up the inaccuracies of her fictional take, to a point where you can spot numerous physical anachronisms in multiple scenes (such as a motorised tractor, or a phone cord, or even plug sockets) which further disrupt the illusion that this is a historical piece. However, this isn’t down to on-set laziness or incompetence, but rather a way for the filmmaker to blend the frustrations and unrequited feelings of desire in her main character, with more modern sensibilities that would have been seen as preposterous in the nineteenth century. It’s certainly odd in its conception, but Kreutzer makes her ambitious choices work through a smooth slow-burn pace that pays noble attention to her protagonist’s emotional journey rather than bogging itself down in historical accuracy.
As a result, Corsage is more of an intriguing character study than a straightforward biopic. Throughout, Empress Elisabeth – played excellently by Vicky Krieps, who accurately nails the painful frustrations of a self-absorbed monarch – is a figure who constantly makes unwise decisions, whether it’s encouraging fanciful suitors to satisfy her ego with flattery, or sending one of her maids to stand in for her at public events while she shoots up heroin (as prescribed by her doctor – oh, what a different time for medicine it was!). However, you still manage to feel for her, as she grows more and more desperate to cling onto whatever ounce of womanhood she has left to control, even if it’s at the expense of her relationships with her husband, her sister, or even her own children. Kreutzer’s careful writing, combined with Krieps’s plentiful turn, makes this character sympathetic and even tragic, with problems that women of similar age might likely also struggle with, which are brought to uncomfortable light under a historical context that feels just as ripe as it would have done back then.
Since the film is of a slower pace, with particular events taking their sweet time transitioning from one to another, it’s easy to see some audience members getting a bit restless through this. It’s not quite as wild or as energetic as the marketing perhaps suggests, but it is tender, and more than a little heart-breaking as it moves further toward a climax that further mythologises this historical figure. In that regard, it’s an unlikely companion piece to last year’s Spencer, which similarly took a lot of liberties to express the inner anguish and turmoil of another royal in the public eye, and also took a fair amount of chances with its fairy tale storytelling amidst a historical context that is still rather raw to this day.
Don’t go in to Corsage expecting an accurate history lesson, but more so a character study of repressed womanhood that is surprisingly still relatable a century and a half later.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Corsage is a slow-burn slice of revisionist history that takes many creative liberties to show a different side to Empress Elisabeth of Austria, which further mythologises the historical figure in ways that feel relatable to many in modern day, thanks to tight filmmaking by Marie Kreutzer and Vicky Krieps’ sympathetic lead turn.
