I felt like I could do my own thing entirely, because I will never do it right.”īut sometimes Elisabeth's search for self-fulfillment seems less a noble quest for liberty than a shirking of her adult responsibilities. “You think it’s a biography, and a historian wrote it, so it must be objective, but it never is,” said Kreutzer. Both are not so much biopics as excuses to explore feminist themes through sad, beautiful women and their exquisite suffering. One of her ladies-in-waiting assumes her role by adopting a strict diet and wearing a wig made from her cut hair.Ĭorsage is less about plot than it is about atmosphere, like the recent Spencer, and takes just as many liberties when it comes to historical accuracy. perfect loads of it.” A literal weight is lifted off her shoulders, as she simultaneously relieves herself of her royal duties. Toward the end of the movie, Elisabeth cuts off her famous hair-described by Queen Victoria’s daughter as a “most extraordinary quantity of chestnut hair. But as the film goes on, it seems that nothing will sway Elisabeth from her death-wish. She survives, suffering only a fracture to her leg. After sparring and arguing with the emperor, she (seemingly impulsively) jumps from a window. Through them, she exerts control over the one thing she has power over: her body. Courtiers gossip that she has gained weight.Īt the same time, the corset and her strict regimen are Elisabeth’s greatest expression of agency. That’s what I chose you for and that’s what you’re here for,” her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph, tells her, not unkindly. (Krieps wore a real corset while playing the empress.) It is a cage: Elisabeth is under constant scrutiny. The corsage (German for “corset”) acts as the central, double-edged metaphor. ![]() In the film, she eats wafer-thin orange slices and broth. ![]() She travels frequently to escape her court, whiling away her time riding horses.Įlisabeth maintained her beautiful image-and her fifty-centimeter waistline-through excessive exercise and dieting. She is melancholic and broody, and feels a kinship with female asylum patients. “A person begins to disperse and fade,” she says. Famous for her youthful beauty, Elisabeth feels she must continue to live up to her own image. Elisabeth (a captivating Vicky Krieps) has just turned forty, to her dismay. ![]() “She’s a myth in many ways,” Kreutzer has said. The 2022 film Corsage, directed by Marie Kreutzer, is the latest addition to this collection. Since then, others have made edgier adaptations. Ernst Marischka’s film Sissi, starring Romy Schneider, captivated German-speaking audiences in 1955, securing the empress’s pop culture fame long after her death. Elisabeth, empress of Austria and queen of Hungary (1837–1898), has been the muse of many a filmmaker.
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