“This is a character study of a complex woman brought up in restrictive times and Kreips delivers an excellent performance in that.“
Con Nats
3.5 Corsets
Before Princess Anne, Di, Fergie and Megan there was Empress Elisabeth, the Queen of Hungary. She has been captured in film previously and was the subject of a recent Netflix series (The Empress) and it’s no surprise. She was a captivating lady who broke rules and was full of contradictions.
This film covers the years 1887 to 1889, just as Empress Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) turns 40, an age that many of her subjects didn’t live past. It opens with the Empress being childish and seeing how long she can hold her breath under water before cutting to a scene where she is demanding her corset is tightened from 44cms to 42cms. (That’s a size 17 inch waist!). She is rude to her staff who cannot comply and is under pressure from the newspaper gossips to lose weight and spend more time in Austria. Sound familiar?
This tightening and frugal diet of two orange slices or soups reveals a self indulgent streak in her. She likes being complimented, or simply looked at, and at age 40 she stopped posing for portraits as she did not wish her image to be captured as an older lady.
She also has a strong resilient streak and doesn’t enjoy the pomp and ceremony of her role. She even fakes a faint to evade her duties, which was fair considering the soft insults she received. And there is a touch of grief after losing a child at age two.
This Empress liked to break all the rules. She exercised and was a very good horsewoman, even going to England to ‘ride’ with her favourite horseman. Romance was more than inferred. She liked to fence and the scene with her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichmeister), is a tense one. She also liked to smoke and visit soldiers injured during the war and she shares a ciggy with a patient as she lies on the bed next to him. She also liked to visit an asylum where women were locked up for trivialities such as adultery and many of her other sins. Hilariously, she is prescribed heroin by a doctor for her ‘restlessness’.
Vicky Kreips approached writer-director Marie Kreutzer for this project and is listed as an Executive Producer. I’m normally wary of this as actors like projects they can unleash their inner-thespian. But this is a partnership that works nicely and they are unbound by the script. (There is a scene where Elisabeth suddenly jumps out a window that was unscripted. Kreips was simply in character and felt it.)
And this is the reason this film has already won awards: Vicky Kreips’ acting. She is simply luminous. She may not look like the Empress but she embodies her character in every way. She is able to project a cheeky impishness and vanity as easily as her fragility and determination. It’s all through her face and often in the same scene. The sensitive script is not laden with big statements but with wry wit and observation which means the actor has to work more.
The final scene is an elegantly brutal one and it’s hard to discuss without giving away spoilers. I was surprised to find it didn’t align with history and have to question this choice. History provided her an ironic end. Kruetzer also takes other historical liberties with using Camille to write the music and modern tunes such Out of Time. They link the story to the present and its feminist ideals which is clever but also a little jarring.
This film isn’t a historically factual biopic. If you want that, watch a documentary. This is a character study of a complex woman brought up in restrictive times and Kreips delivers an excellent performance in that.
Con Nats, On The Screen
