Directed by Marie Kreutzer
Austria | 2022 | Fiction | 113 min | German w/ subtitles
Film Source: IFC
Sponsored by: Barbara Zucker & Melinda White Bronson
Austria's submission to the Oscars in Best International Feature category. Vicky Krieps - Winner – Best Actor – Un Certain Regard– Cannes 2022 The Empress Elisabeth of Corsage is an irreverent, often immature, first lady with an insatiable desire to determine her own future. Having helped establish the doomed joint Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Elisabeth (or Sissi) certainly occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of Austrians. In a reimagining of the fabled empress by writer-director Marie Kreutzer, Corsage is a witty subversion of biopic and costume-drama clichés. Brilliantly played by Vicky Krieps as mysterious and sensual, imperious and severe, in many ways Kreutzer’s film is a study in anger. It is 1877 in Vienna, and Sissi is turning 40. Every day she faces the figurative and literal struggle to fit into her tightly drawn corsage and get down to a terrifying 18-inch waistline. For Sissi, the personal is political. Kreutzer’s insertion of anachronistic songs and imaginary encounters both reinforce the empress’ unease and allow her a reprieve by time-traveling, momentarily, to the present day. Kreutzer’s previous film, The Ground Beneath My Feet, from 2019, had a similar shrewd sense of how women are isolated and restricted by whatever status they have been able to cultivate.