CORSAGE

Corsage offers an intriguing, modern point of view on the life of Empress Sisi, amplified by the picture's curious use of periodical anachronisms, both visually and on its soundtrack.

If your lasting memory of Empress Sisi are the romantic fifties movies starring Romy Schneider, you are in for a rude awakening with Corsage, which portrays the historical character in a much more stark and unflattering light.

As played - with considerable aplomb - by actress Vicki Krieps, the Austrian-Hungarian Empress is a world-weary, self-centered curmudgeon, afraid of aging into oblivion and longing to escape from her husband, her daughter and her royal duties. It's an intriguing, modern point of view, amplified by the picture's curious use of periodical anachronisms, both visually and on its soundtrack.

But while this manages to hold the viewer's attention for considerable stretches of Corsage's runtime, in the final furlong the movie grows tired and fails to answer the most important question: what is it that made Sisi into such a cynical, bored Empress?

Add to this an ending that rewrites history in an utterly unconvincing way, and Corsage emerges as a film that is never less than interesting but seldom more than the sum of its parts.

release: 2022

director: Marie Kreutzer

starring: Vicky Krieps, Colin Morgan, Florian Teichtmeister, Tamás Lengyel