Mark Reviews Movies: CORSAGE

Corsage, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 22, 2022

For most of its run time, writer/director Marie Kreutzer's Corsage isn't quite a biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria—until it really isn't one. The movie is more an examination of the privileges of being wealthy and powerful beyond the thinking of most ordinary people, as well as the perils of feeling powerless despite all of that. It's definitely more engaging in telling that first part of the story, making the latter notion feel slightly disingenuous.

Vicky Krieps plays the monarch, wife to Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister) and something of a mystery to her subjects. She's a reclusive woman, spending almost the entirety of this story, set in the late 1870s, within the comforts of various palaces, manors, and estates. During her first and only public appearance within the narrative, Elisabeth fakes a fainting spell to escape the gazes and gossip surrounding her.

When she isn't in one of her or her family's grand homes, she might take private tours of an asylum or, later, a hospital, where wounded soldiers suffer from a military expedition ordered by her husband. There's a bit of a contradiction to these visits, such as the way she almost seems to search for a compliment from one inmate in the asylum. Despite the outward appearance of altruism and propriety, this Elisabeth seems driven by vanity, an insecure ego (Much the story unfolds after the event of her 40th birthday), and the desire to be, well, desired.

That's one part of this character, as months pass and locales change with her whims and her longing to get away from the life of royalty. She forgets the names of servants who have been with her for years. She teases horse trainer Bay (Colin Morgan) with affection but only seeks his worship of her. She denies Marie (Katharina Lorenz), one of her ladies-in-waiting, the chance to accept a marriage proposal, only to later use the woman in a way that ultimately changes the entire course of the real empress' biography (Kreutzer prepares us for such anachronisms, mainly through the use of electric lighting and songs that won't be written for another century within this timeline).

The other part, perhaps, is far less critical of the character and twofold. She's a rebel of sorts, making a vulgar gesture upon exiting a dinner out of frustration, and a revolutionary thinker, suggesting a newfangled motion-picture camera should also record sound. That's meant to make her more admirable, just as we're meant to sympathize with her for how the weight of ruling and being forced into a certain way of life has made her melancholy and aimless. Krieps finds a fine balance between these multiple and distinct qualities of the character.

Corsage offers up an intriguing character study, even if the movie never quite determines where it stands with and how we should feel about this character. That's a misstep or miscalculation that simply can't be overlooked.

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