A costume film with a low budget but a high tail – and a winning anarchist streak. Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary has lived with the epithet "Beautiful" all her life. She diets, devotes hours to her hairstyle, but it's a battle that's impossible to win, when the years and the law of gravity take their toll. And that corset is getting tighter about Elisabeth's life.
We get to step into a royal 40-year crisis, when the Empress comes to terms with her own vanity and that of those around her, and with the strict convention. And so there in passing makes sure to control world politics.
The long arm of feminist historiography once again stretches back through the eras, giving the patriarchy a belated slap and highlighting the tightly held court women. As in "Spencer" about Lady Di, Danish "Queen Margareta", "The girl king" about Queen Kristina and – not to forget – Sofia Coppola's now 17-year-old but youthfully sprawling "Marie Antoinette".
"Corset" is the latter's cockier big sister. There's the same anachronistic quirkiness here – there's contemporary music playing, there's a tractor standing there, trashing, and someone drinking a big strong one – which suggests that there's really quite a bit that separates the present and the past. Technology is advancing but expectations of women (and men) are changing marginally. A simple thought that is cleverly formulated in a petty and entertaining film.
Much thanks to Vicky Krieps in the lead role, who brings out a peculiar mix of melancholy and javelinity. It is she who reigns, mainly with her razor-sharp acting (which won her an award at Cannes last year) but also as a co-producer and it is also said to be she who suggested to the filmmaker Marie Kreutzer to make the film.
Thus: without Vicky no Sisi (as Elisabeth is said to have been called). At least not in a wayward suit like this, but otherwise it's springtime for the unruly empress right now. Right now, you can see two different TV series in her honor, both quite conventional creations with a suitably sweet, moderately rebellious protagonist – which Sisi himself would likely have given the finger.