Corsage: Film Review
I have seen so many rave reviews and effusive posters and trailers for Corsage but I feel like I’ve seen a totally different film – I didn’t go much on it at all.
This anachronistic period drama is set in the late 1870s and tells the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps), the 40-year-old rebellious wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I (Florian Teichtmeister).
Corsage should not be treated like a biopic. The characteristics are generally based on facts: Elisabeth barely slept, ate a restrictive diet, smoked, wore extremely tight corsets to keep her waist thin and tried to avoid her duties where possible. However, her actions are mostly fictional, particularly towards the end.
I don’t watch trailers often, but I caught the trailer for Corsage in the cinema. It made me think this film would be a whimsical, cheeky and comedic period drama similar to Emma (2020), Marie Antoniette and The Favourite. It has fleeting moments of irreverence (the ones shown in the trailer!) where Elisabeth sticks her middle finger to the system (sometimes literally) but the film takes itself much more seriously than that. It’s less fun and vibrant than I expected and there’s not a plot as such so I found it quite slow and dull.
We spend most of the film watching Elisabeth suffocate within the confines of her gilded cage. She is thoroughly restless, impulsive and depressed, tries to spend as much time away from her husband as possible, flirts with other men and rebels against protocol and expectations where she can. It became quite amusing towards the end when she devised a doppelganger plot to get her out of obligations but I generally found it quite unengaging.
Krieps perfectly channels the depths of Elisabeth’s melancholy and despair as well as her provocative “f**k the establishment” attitude. She looks so pale and unwell thanks to her punishing diet and corsets. Krieps has been nominated by a few awards bodies which is a surprise to me; I didn’t clock her on my awards radar at all.
I’ve seen the words “bold” and “romp” to describe Corsage and I feel like I saw a different film to those people. I thought it was rather dull!
In cinemas from Monday 26th December