‘Corsage’ Review: A Superb Vicky Krieps Gives the Empress New Clothes in a Brilliant Reclamation of the ‘Sissi’ Legend
variety.comJessica Kiang The Empress is unimpressed. Introduced to us at the beginning of Marie Kreutzer’s sneaky and terrific Un Certain Regard premiere “Corsage,” submerged in a bathtub during one of her many self-imposed endurance training rituals, Duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie in Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, is holding her breath underwater for as long as she can.
When she surfaces, the two nervous palace maids tasked with timing her cannot agree on the count, but even if they could, she would doubtless be dissatisfied.
It is Vienna in 1877, Elisabeth is turning 40 and dissatisfaction — with herself, her political role, and a public image as restrictive as her whalebone undergarments — is fast becoming her default mode.
Even in repose, impatience rises off her like the smoke from one of her frequent cigarettes. She frowns at her reflection and has tetchy, bitten-off conversations with her stiff, remote husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister).
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