.the princess portal.

Today the Princess had an adventure. I left home in the morning, wearing my favourite poodle shirt and caught a bus to meet Clara in Belmont. The weather was lovely, although the sun was hot there was a nice cool breeze In Belmont we went to the bank to send our money to BABY:heart: I hope they ship our order soon, I’m so excited about it! I shall finally have some winter clothes.

After this I went to the Belmont Library, which has lovely gardens and fountains, to pick up a copy of “The Queen of Diamonds” by Jean Plaidy (Its about the Affair of the Necklace) I took a nice stroll in the park. As I was passing by one of the small lakes I saw a group of three swans swimming around the fountain! Now west australian swans are special because they are all black, my city is one of the few places in the world you will find them. As I approached, one of the swans broke away from the group and came to greet me. She came right to the edge of the pond and I had to resist the urge to reach out and stroke her shiny black feathers. I did take some nice photos of her though, there are more in my gallery:sparkle:

I then made the long journey up to the Hills where my parents live. I had tea and fruit scones with my mother and played with the neighbour’s gorgeous Cocker Spaniel and then had a delicious dinner at my Father’s where the prince joined me. My Father also gave me some camera advice which should help my photos turn out less blurry

Oh My! This movie was amazing. I had heard so much about it, both good and bad that I decided to go in with no expectations whatsoever and make up my own mind. I also took the Historian’s advice to “Go along for the ride” and what a ride it was! I shall start with what I loved about the film, then its downfalls and a summary:sparkle:

The first thing that struck me about the movie was its rawness, although it is visually very beautiful there is a certain reality to it. The colours and textures and sounds sort of brought it down to earth. Every other film and anime I have seen about the subject has been dreamy and fairy-tale like, but this one was very bright and close and real. Although the acting was far from fantastic I like that they all acted very “modern” because it made it easy to identify with the characters, they all seemed like people we know. I also enjoyed the few little historic bits they did include, like Marie signing the marriage certificate with a hasty scrawl and an ink blot. The clothes and food and shoes were, of course, stunning. I really really want a full length rococo gown.. in pink crepe silk. And I want the silk and fur cape she wears out in the gardens on her birthday party. The music was nowhere near as bad as I expected, there was a lot of classical and opera in there with the 80’s pop. As for Marie Antoinette herself, the only thing I can say is that I liked how they portrayed her artistic temperament. Especially during the hamlet scenes. The best actor of the lot was Rose Byrne, who played the Duchesse du Polignac superbly! She was the most entertaining dazzling creature there and I think she upstaged Kirsten Dunst quite a bit. I want to find a book on Polignac now and learn more about her.

There were several things that irked me, though they didn’t stop me from enjoying the film. The first was, as I have already mentioned, the cruel treatment of Madame Du Barry who was not ugly, old, crude and wicked but rather a sweet young thing who was trained perfectly in court ettiquette and behaved far more like a princess than a lot of the other court ladies. I suppose they wanted to have a villian to make us sympathise with Marie.. but still, it was overdone. I also found the relationship with Count Fersen very poorly done, it was briefly skimmed over with no depth or respect for the Count’s noble character and all the good he did for the monarchy. I think it was just used as an excuse to put a sex scene in. Kirsten Dunst really was not the best actress for the role of Marie Antoinette, she played the queen in her late teens (party days) fairly well but did a dreadful job of representing the younger Marie and then failed to impress apon us the dignity of the elder. I think they could have at least had a second actress for 14 yr old Marie, there is no way Dunst can pass for a 14 year old.

I think I really need to watch the film again. The volume in the cinema was a bit low so I missed some of the whispered conversation and the audience insisted in laughing through the whole thing, which was a bit unneccesary so I think I shall buy the dvd when it is available. It was a truely stunning movie and a very unique treatment of the subject. I’m quite glad they ended it where they did, it was a perfect slice of the Queen’s life, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Four stars :star::star::star::star:

Last night I went to see the movie :bow:Marie Antoinette:bow: with some friends. We went to the Cinema Paradiso for a special screening with a talk by a historian. We arrived early to get our tickets and line up for seats. There were so many people there! I think the cinema was nearly full, and it was quite a large one. Luckily we got very good seats! We were a couple of rows down from the middle, and had a good central view of the screen Before the movie started, the Historian (Who’s name was Deborah, she’s australian but runs tours of Versailles) introduced the film by saying that at first she didn’t like it, because she’d been to see it originally with her “history hat” on, and of course a lot of it is not historically correct. However after watching it a few more times she began to see why the director had made it that way, and now she likes the film for what it was. Apparantly it was quite well recieved in France, because the French “got it” in a way the critics can’t understand.

I enjoyed the movie thoroughly I’ll post a full review shortly. After the film we had the chance to ask questions of the presenter. There were a few obvious ones, and some interesting ones (I was interested to learn exactly how much her clothing allowance was) and I asked a question myself. I asked “Do you think Madame du Barry was over villianised in the film?” and she said yes, and went on to describe the beautiful, sweet, well mannered creature Du Barry really was. I’m glad she agreed with me on this, because I was quite upset by how they portrayed her Du Barry is a figure who interests me quite a lot.

After the question session, we prepared to leave, but as we were going the Historian and the organizers of the event came up to us and asked if we wouldn’t mind having our photo’s taken with the presenter. Mirai and I were dressed in sweet lolita, so we posed with her for a bit. Afterwards I talked to her a little more about Du Barry and Marie Antoinette and she said she loved our clothing and that “She [marie antoinette] would be proud of you!”

The movie finished early enough that we decided to go to the gaming arcade for a bit. My darling Prince tried very hard to win me a plushie on the UFO machines, but I think they were rigged We did take some cute Purikura though, and played DDR for a while (Steph is so good at DDR!). On our way home we stopped for Gelato and I made the Prince try the Lemon Lime and Bitters flavour I liked It was a truely wonderful evening.