“Marie-Antoinette”: is the series on the rebellious queen really feminist?

Solène Delinger 6:28 p.m., November 04, 2022

A series telling the story of a woman, written, produced and directed by women... Five years after the passage of the #MeToo wave, and while feminist struggles have returned to center stage, the show

broadcast on Canal+, is undeniably in tune with the times.

The director Deborah Davis has thus chosen to tell the story of the young Austrian princess through her eyes and her perception of events. 

"We can't help but see Marie-Antoinette as modern"

An original and feminist narration?

Undeniably.

However, there was never any question for Deborah Davis and Stéphanie Chartreux, the producer of

, to erect this character as a feminist icon.

"Deborah Davis wanted above all to bring a different look at her story. She wanted to tell it differently", explains to Europe 1 Stéphanie Chartreux, for whom "we can't help but see Marie-Antoinette as modern" because the wife of Louis XVI was a woman living in a hostile environment. 

Marie-Antoinette and Lady Diana, two women who defended a right to privacy

The first episodes of

follow the arrival of the princess in France, when she was only 14 years old.

Marie-Antoinette joins her husband Louis XVI, the Dauphin of France.

She leaves her country, her family, leaves behind all her landmarks.

Yet she is only a child.

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 Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette: united in death

Naive and innocent, she arrives at the court without understanding the codes.

Far from the vain image that the character of Marie-Antoinette has in the film Marie-Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, released in 2006, Marie-Antoinette, in the series offered by Canal+, first appears as a naive and innocent teenager, arriving in a world whose codes she does not understand.

"Like Lady Di, Marie-Antoinette had a somewhat fair preparation for royal life", underlines Stéphanie Chartreux.

And like Diana, Marie-Antoinette ended up integrating these codes to better emancipate herself from them.

"They were defending a right to privacy", assures the producer of the series for Europe 1. "Queen Elizabeth II was one with her duty, she was completely devoted to her public life. The opposite is true of Diana as of Marie-Antoinette, who aspired to be a private person and who were at war with their public role”, also assures Deborah Davis in an interview for

The body of Marie-Antoinette has become a public and political object 

The plot of

focuses on one question: will Marie-Antoinette and Louis VXI succeed or not in having sex to give France a "male" heir ensuring the union between France and France? Austria and avoid a war?

This screenplay choice by Deborah Davis is obviously feminist since it shows to what extent Marie-Antoinette was dispossessed of her own body, which had become a public and political object.

"We wanted to show the weight that this weighed on the young woman", explains Stéphanie Chartreux.

Three centuries later, the question of the right of women to freely dispose of their bodies is still topical. 

So, if Deborah Davis did not want to erect Marie-Antoinette as a feminist heroine, as Stéphanie Chartreux points out, the director of the Canal + series shows how modern she was.

And, the narration of

, which gives density to the character by focusing on her feelings and her psychology, is feminist.

Because, for the first time, Marie-Antoinette is not only presented as the wife of Louis XVI, doomed to a tragic destiny, but as a joyful, free and rebellious woman, passionate about fashion and music.

Just for that, the 

carried by the luminous Emilia Schüle,

definitely worth a look.