Sofia Coppola’s late mother, Eleanor, spent 57 days at Versailles filming the making of “Marie Antoinette,” and the 80 hours of footage she gathered now form a documentary that played to an appreciative New York Film Festival crowd.
“Making Marie Antoinette” screened in the festival’s Spotlight section after debuting at Telluride. Eleanor Coppola holds the sole director credit, and MUBI holds the release rights. Diane Lane narrates, reading from Eleanor’s journals of the 2005 shoot.
Coppola told the post-screening audience that her family gathered at their Napa Valley home to watch the footage together for the first time. The material brought back a rush of memories, she said, and “It’s embarrassing for me,” she added after the screening. The mother and daughter began organizing the tapes during the 2020 lockdown. Eleanor died in April 2024, and Sofia completed the project as a tribute, working with editor Aaron Matthews.
The film shows a young director finding her footing amid chaos. Crews wrestle with large crowds of extras and hours of hair, makeup and costume work. Kirsten Dunst, who plays the doomed queen, and cousin Jason Schwartzman, cast as Louis XVI, provide much of the levity. At one point Eleanor asks her daughter why isolated women keep drawing her attention. Dunst answers with a comparison to her own early life as a child actor. Another sequence turns tender when Sofia falls ill with bronchitis and her mother steps in to summon a doctor.
The documentary also honors costume designer Milena Canonero, who created more than 70 gowns for Dunst and won an Academy Award for the work. Reviewers describe the film as a portrait of collaboration. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Eleanor had access other making-of filmmakers could only envy, as mother of the director, aunt of a co-star and longtime acquaintance of Dunst.
The film arrives twenty years after “Marie Antoinette” opened to mixed reviews and modest box office returns. It has since gained cult status and received a Criterion 4K release. Eleanor, who documented her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” in the acclaimed “Hearts of Darkness,” made this her final film credit.
