10) Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola’s historical comedy-drama may be a stylish, visually appealing film, but its historical accuracy is unfortunately lacking. As played by Kristen Dunst, the titular French aristocrat has about zero character development throughout the entire movie. Many historians tak issue with the fact that she’s portrayed eating pastries and reveling in her rich lifestyle from age 15 to 33, when Antoinette actually changed significantly throughout her time at Versailles, according to multiple historians. By 33, she had matured from a naive girl into an intelligent woman who was by most accounts sweet-hearted, compassionate and eloquent.
Of course, the infantilization of Antoinette can be traced all the way back to rumor-mongers dragging her reputation through the mud in the years leading up to the French Revolution. But Coppola’s film takes other liberties as well. The biggest one is its treatment of her husband, Louis XIV (Jason Schwartzmann). In Marie Antoinette, it’s shown that his pathological fear of sex contributed to Antoinette’s difficulties conceiving. In reality, he suffered from a real medical condition called phimosis, which made sex both tricky and painful for the poor guy.
Other odd anachronisms in Marie Antoinette include light bulbs, a plane contrail in the sky, visible contact lenses and Antoinette trying on left and right shoes (not existent at the time). The film also gets both the number and ages of her children wrong. As a visual piece, it’s decadent and enjoyable. However, as a historical epic, recording the decades in which she rose to power and fell victim to the fury of French peasants, it’s an unfortunately shoddy and one-sided affair.