Corsage (2022, Marie Kreutzer) (Patreon)

45/100

Constricted lies the torso that wears a corset, etc. Honestly, I suspect that IFC is sticking with Corsage, despite the potential confusion in English*—and, indeed, suspect that Kreutzer went with French in the first place (German word's apparently "korsett")—because Corset is just painfully blunt, rendering the film itself all but redundant. Not that anyone would take long to clock this as Vaguely Dissatisfied Royalty: The Movie, irrespective of title, since there's fuck-all else going on. S. Coppola's Marie Antoinette is the obvious comparison, one that Kreutzer boldly/foolhardily encourages by likewise employing anachronistic music (sometimes diegetically, here; the harpist playing "As Tears Go By" was my favorite). Krieps is playing Sissi at 40, however, after more than two decades as Empress, so she's not befuddled so much as she's just plain bored, an emotional state that she rather speedily passed on to me. The film just doesn't offer anything much beyond its thesis statement and Krieps' solid embodiment of barely resigned frustration; what little energy it generates is derived from superimposing 21st-century dispositions upon history (see the U.S. poster image of Sissi's gloved right hand flipping off the camera), and if you're gonna go that route, might as well go all the way à la The Favourite and The Great. Otherwise you wind up with the worst of both worlds: a smattering of modern attitude enshrouded in naturalistic tedium. Not sure how I'd feel about the ending had I experienced it in a vacuum, but I'm definitely ready at this point to call a moratorium on Tarantino-style revisionist wish-fulfillment (even if Sissi's onscreen fate—while preferable to assassination—isn't exactly what you'd call rosy). Saying that a movie's closing credits are the best thing about it inevitably sounds thank-christ-that's-over snotty, but this joins Let the Sunshine In as a sincere example, with the image over which those credits scroll genuinely making me feel a bit more warmly toward an experience that I'd largely disliked. Really wish it were remotely tonally representative of Corsage as a whole. 

* Imagine Haynes' Poison as a German film, released in the U.S. still titled Gift. This is really not much less misleading to Americans, who see "corsage" and think of high school prom night rather than women who can barely breathe.