osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-17 08:25 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-17 08:25 am
Entry tags:
Corsage
At Heartland Film Festival, it’s become something of a tradition that the audience claps at the end of each feature. I’m not sure how this started - maybe as a courtesy because the filmmakers show up at so many of the features? - but it’s a nice tradition, and I always clap too, even at movies like The Country Club that I didn’t like so much.
It is therefore meaningful that at the end of Corsage, no one in the theater clapped. Possibly we were all shell-shocked.
Corsage is loosely based on the life of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, also known as Sisi, famously one of the most beautiful women in 19th century Europe. She was obsessed with her appearance and practiced an extensive diet and exercise regime long before that was common. She was also accused of tight-lacing her corset; corsage is corset in German, and no, I don’t know why they didn’t translate the title. I personally am not wild about movies that are about women obsessed with the ~horror of growing older~ but at least this part is based on fact.
In the movie, the year is 1878, and Sisi has just turned forty. She fears losing her beauty, she’s bored of court life, and about halfway through she decides that the way out is to kill herself. She jumps out the window of her fencing salon, contemplates how to hang herself, and ultimately trains one of her ladies-in-waiting to impersonate her, while Sisi herself jumps off a ship to her death.
Also, at some point a random guy shows up with a movie camera (ten years before movie cameras were invented) and films Sisi.
In real life, Sisi lived till 1898 and died when she was assassinated by an Italian anarchist. I’m absolutely baffled why the filmmakers had her jump off a boat twenty years early. Why not have her live out her full life span, in which case you could bring in a no-longer-anachronistic movie camera? Or focus the movie on the year Sisi turned forty and just not have her die at the end?
Also absolutely baffled that this movie is apparently getting awards buzz. That’s why I decided to see it, in fact: “I’ll get in on the ground floor, like with Portrait of a Lady on Fire!” Well, I got what I deserved for seeing a movie for such an ignominious reason.
It is therefore meaningful that at the end of Corsage, no one in the theater clapped. Possibly we were all shell-shocked.
Corsage is loosely based on the life of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, also known as Sisi, famously one of the most beautiful women in 19th century Europe. She was obsessed with her appearance and practiced an extensive diet and exercise regime long before that was common. She was also accused of tight-lacing her corset; corsage is corset in German, and no, I don’t know why they didn’t translate the title. I personally am not wild about movies that are about women obsessed with the ~horror of growing older~ but at least this part is based on fact.
In the movie, the year is 1878, and Sisi has just turned forty. She fears losing her beauty, she’s bored of court life, and about halfway through she decides that the way out is to kill herself. She jumps out the window of her fencing salon, contemplates how to hang herself, and ultimately trains one of her ladies-in-waiting to impersonate her, while Sisi herself jumps off a ship to her death.
Also, at some point a random guy shows up with a movie camera (ten years before movie cameras were invented) and films Sisi.
In real life, Sisi lived till 1898 and died when she was assassinated by an Italian anarchist. I’m absolutely baffled why the filmmakers had her jump off a boat twenty years early. Why not have her live out her full life span, in which case you could bring in a no-longer-anachronistic movie camera? Or focus the movie on the year Sisi turned forty and just not have her die at the end?
Also absolutely baffled that this movie is apparently getting awards buzz. That’s why I decided to see it, in fact: “I’ll get in on the ground floor, like with Portrait of a Lady on Fire!” Well, I got what I deserved for seeing a movie for such an ignominious reason.