ON July 14, 1789, the Paris mob stormed the Bastille, an event still observed as France’s national day. On July 16, the Polignac family left Versailles for exile.

Benoit Jacquot’s film, based on Chantal Thomas’s novel, observes Queen Marie Antoinette (Dianne Kruger) on July 14, 15, and 16 as revolution built outside the Palace of Versailles.

It tells its story through the eyes of the Queen’s reader Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) whom the Queen tells to impersonate Madame de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen) on their flight to Austria. Gabrielle de Polignac was the Queen’s closest and dearest friend.

The film projects an air of doom confirmed by history. Sidonie, who may be fictional, the Queen’s confidante at a lower level, observes from the edge as nobles, courtiers and functionaries mill about exchanging gossip and rumor, passages that give the film a sense of verity.

Sidonie’s devotion to the Queen is absolute. Under the thumb of Madame Campan (Noémie Lvovsky) who envies and disapproves of the Queen’s friendship with her, she has little if any private life.

The film emphasises the Queen’s emotional dependence on Gabrielle, tending to suggest that Gabrielle knew when she was on a good thing rather than that the relationship gave her emotional fulfillment.

It treads lightly around contemporary unproven media accusations of a lesbian affair. It portrays the King (Xavier Beauvoir) as politically naïve, dependant on his brothers for advice, concerned more with trifles such as the temperature in the great hall as revolution begins to come to the boil.

And amid all that palace brouhaha, our awareness of the historical certainty of the Queen’s fate on October 16, 1793 creates a tension that sits intentionally awkwardly alongside the opulence of the palace where the film happens.

At Palace Electric