Please tell me you've seen Marie Antoinette, the Sophia Coppola glama-rama that is both aesthetically and audibly appealing. Not only do I think Kirsten Dunst & Jason Shwartzman make an awkwardly amusing royal couple, but everything about the movie, including the music, is fantastic.
My favorite track off this soundtrack, The Melody of A Fallen Tree by Windsor for the Derby, has racked up quite the play-count on my comp over the years (but don't judge it for getting played around), simply for its adaptive, poetic nature. I could literally listen to that song in any state of mind, in any environment, and I would enjoy it. Others, like Bow Wow Wow's Aphrodisiac, are almost made to be played against a montage of Dunst picking out shoes, wigs, and small chocolate cakes. The album is a fine blend of simplicity and decadence, as is the film. Every track though, just as every scene, is oddly beautiful.
Coppola is known for melding the old with the new, and in Antoinette, similar to The Virgin Suicides or Lost In Translation, she brings some of the freshest funk, pop, and alt-rock imaginable to her soundtracks. The film itself is rich with themes impervious to the confines of time and decade-appropriate guidelines. So why should the music be anything but abstract? In fact, the songs that fill your ears as you watch this film very much match every aspect of Coppola's message: of youthful indiscretion, tremendous excess, and the gluttonous, glorious life that such a young power possessed. Afterall, when you listen to these tracks, you might as well be watching Clueless, Pretty In Pink, or perhaps The Breakfast Club. And I think I speak for Ms. C herself when I say, that's pretty much the point.
Top 5 favorites:
-Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
-What Ever Happened - The Strokes
-Natural's Not In It - Gang of Four: ("The problem of leisure/what to do for pleasure?")
-The Melody of a Fallen Tree - Windsor for the Derby
-I Don't Like It Like This - The Radio Department
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