‘Corsage’

Movie Review

Corsage is a historical drama film written and directed by Mary Kreutzer. Starring Vicky Kriebs, Florian Teichmeister, Katharina Lawrence, Jeanne Werner, Alma Hasun, Manuel Rubey, Finnegan Oldfield, Aaron Friesz, Rosa Hajjaj, Lily Marie Tschortner and Colin Morgan.

Separated from her happy husband, Empress Elisabeth of Austria begins to act differently as she approaches her 40th birthday. The empress is known for her beauty and spends a lot of time weighing herself, refusing to eat, and dissecting comments about her appearance.

The Corsage is based on a real life of Austrian empress, but nothing else feels grounded in reality beyond the film's characters, and seamlessly blends in with what feels like a conscious attempt to engage the audience. The question is how to tell such stories, part revisionist history, part unorthodox character study, Corsage is buoyed by Vicki Krieps' excellent performance and its willingness to subvert genre conventions in favor of a dark, dreamlike fairy tale.

Corsage begins in December 1877 and tracks a year in Elizabeth's life two decades before her murder in 1898. Estranged from her husband Franz Joseph I, played by Florian Teichmeister, is Elizabeth's daughter Valerie, played by Rosa Hajjaj, and herself. It's the day before her 40th birthday, and she's clearly confused about getting older, finding every little distraction she can. In a celebration in the film's opening moments, Elizabeth collapses in front of a group of visitors. She flirts with her steady boyfriend and befriends Louis Le Prince, played by Finnegan Oldfield, who is considered the father of cinematography. And all this, a small rebellion against old age, against the oppressive life she is forced to live, even as history tries to catch up with her.

Krieps lives in Elizabeth. Roles like these allowed Krieps to act on her own terms, albeit with different results, a quality she clearly shares with the Empress. Krieps's lead is systematically followed by the rest of the cast, from Florian Teichmeister's Franz I to Aaron Fries as Crown Prince Rudolf. While we feel like we're missing some important parts of what Elizabeth is like, it's intentional that neither she nor the other side characters get much screen time. Some of her interactions with Franz work to make up for this, but director Kreutzer shows a side that the audience wants to know about the freedom she clearly feels with people like Louis Le Prince or Bay Middleton played by Colin Morgan. It was an unfortunate circumstance for Elizabeth's status that these relations should go astray because of the loyalty of a king who knew his son was in decline.

The ending of Corsage is its most divisive element, as it leans heavily on the alternate history it portrays. Elizabeth may finally have the freedom she longs for, but the connection to what lies ahead feels tenuous. It's hard to tell whether the Empress' downfall is intentional on her part or a symptom of a larger problem, and the outcome of some of the weirder scenes revealed here could veer into spoiler territory. The ambiguity seems intentional, but it doesn't quite work when the idea of Elizabeth's agency plays out across the corsage.

For some things that don't work, there's a good amount of Corsage. Krieps is able to communicate a complex interior in Elizabeth through small glimpses, which is a testament to director Kreutz’s writing and direction as well as the actress's own ability to feel she has more to say. In that sense, Corsage feels like a beginning for both Krieps and Elisabeth, even though Krieps has continued to produce great work for half a decade and Elisabeth is long gone.

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