By Aaron Hillis
Posted September 29, 2006, 4:25 P.M. EST

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.

Prestige festival or not, the New York selection committee has been acquiring more and more mainstream indies and Oscar-baiters each year, but when I say that The Queen is a stately pleasure to regard, I'm speaking not of that sacred cow named Almodóvar but the fest's opening-night dramedy. It's the summer of 1997, and the paparazzi-influenced death of "The People's Princess" Diana has sent shock waves throughout the international media and the world; meanwhile, behind the walls of Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren, who should start prepping her Academy Award speech now), bitterly nonchalant about what she judges to be a private family matter, ignores public perceptions as a wrongheaded form of self-preservation. Newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), on the other hand, proves savvy in his response to the world's grievers as he sets out to "modernize" Britain. With a sharp, unpretentious script by Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland) and competent direction by the hit-or-miss Stephen Frears (High Fidelity; Mrs. Henderson Presents), this bitingly funny film isn't just firing off rounds inside Her Majesty's chambers as a character assassination; nor is Blair given clemency for his blunders today because of his noble decisions then. The measure of any straightforward biopic should be how its dynamics resonate outside its dramatizations, and given its content, The Queen is a surprisingly compassionate portrait (excepting Blair's reactionary wife with the "shallow curtsy") of a rigid pragmatist in denial over the monarchy's out-of-touch dysfunction. After all, could anyone imagine the Royal Family condoning a public funeral filled with, as Prince Philip (James Cromwell) sadly dismisses, "a chorus line of soap stars and homosexuals?"

Kirsten Dunst, center, as Marie Antoinette.

The punk standard "God Save the Queen" could've made for ballsy closing-credits music to the Frears film à la "Young Americans" in von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay, but it's more surprising that the Sex Pistols aren't heard amid the mostly new-wave soundtrack for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (Don't worry Johnny Rotten fans, the title sequence is a collage homage, never mind the bollocks!). Instead, it's Gang of Four's post-punk angst that boisterously introduces the Oscar-winning auteur's follow-up to Lost in Translation. Marie, third in her ongoing series about girls trapped in their own lives (see also: The Virgin Suicides), is a fun fantasy frolic that favors hipster anachronism over historical scrupulousness. You'd think it was bloody sacrilege the way it divided critics at Cannes, many of whom felt that a modern chronicle of the 18th-century French monarch was irresponsible for narrowing its scope solely within the decadent court of Versailles. Off with their heads, I say, as Marie Antoinette is an ambitiously stylized, deliberately microcosmic adaptation of Antonia Fraser's best-selling bio that illustrates just how naïve and unfairly judged the Austrian debutante–turned–teen queen (here played with appropriate giddiness by Kirsten Dunst) was. Of course, the film's surface is period fashion porn, a superficial girl's night out with mezzanine-high dessert trays, as she was only an overgrown child when betrothed to the reticent King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman, in abused-puppy mode), without any cultural guidance on how to act, live, rule, or defend herself when the king refused to consummate the marriage. Alongside the liberty-taking of The New World, Marie Antoinette can't be held to the same criterion as a less audacious biopic like The Queen. Though let's be honest, the film is nothing less than a luxuriant watch, with its epically symmetrical, Barry Lyndon–esque cinematography and inspired acting (especially Rip Torn as King Louis XV, with Asia Argento as his mistress), yet it doesn't swim with ideas like Terrence Malick's aforementioned masterpiece. Marie Antoinette churns a symphony out of a single note, too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.