Empress Elisabeth of Austria is idolised for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, she celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image. Seeking the excitement and purpose of her youth, she rebels against her public image and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy.
I love having the opportunity to check out non-Blockbuster Hollywood films. It's refreshing to get away from the familiar formulas and familiar faces, and instead revel in a real experience; or at least a fictional interpretation of a real experience.
Corsage is a fictional period-piece, looking at the year leading up to the death of the real-life Empress Elisabeth of Austria (popularly known as Sisi). A world beauty and fashion icon who, having passed the age of 40, is now deemed an old woman, and has found praise turn to criticism, wonder turn to gossip, as she is pushed into the shadows.
Coincidentally, released in the same year as the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Corsage focuses on the events leading up to the death of a monarch. Two women in similar roles, a century apart; that time has made them receive distinctively different responses from the public as they age. It is this difference that has led to the culmination of Corsage, an embodiment of the constraints and limitations placed on women all over the world, but in our modern age, something that would look out of place on a person of power. And yet, it is this conflicting idea of conditional outrage that enraptures the audience.
Polarizing in its creation, the pacing of Corsage changes in a moment, dependent on the whim of our protagonist, Elisabeth (brilliantly played by Vicky Krieps) swings from effervescent and full of wonder, to bouts of melancholy and lethargy. This erratic timing makes everything feel glacial and unimaginatively stolid, but the depth of emotion (and sometimes lack thereof) holds you in place, unable to look away as we watch them voluntarily "fall from grace".
The film revels in the Empress' rebellious nature, and pivots from regal to slovenly, casting a spotlight on the contrast between what is viewed by the public eye and what can be seen in private, creating an absolute chasm of a divide between the behaviour that one wants from us and the behaviour we want to exhibit. Corsage is an exploration of vices and passion, manipulation, and obsession, honesty and deception, loss and revelation.
We gleefully observe this alternate reality; highlighted by impossible presences in the 19th century. Emergency exit signs, film cameras, motorized tractors, a plastic mop and bucket, acts of flipping the middle finger, and modern music are peppered throughout the viewing, a constant reminder of the film's divergence from reality, but also a sentimental wish of what could have been for the late Sisi. The cinematography from Judith Kaufmann is divine and thoughtful with an earthy palette that provides a sense of warmth and focuses the audience's view.
A fashion article that is a literal and figurative representation of restriction and vanity, the film centres each act around the performance of tightening a corsage (corset/bodice). The diet required to fit the piece. The youth that it symbolizes, The rigidity and uncompromising nature of social conventions. They all link back to the corsage.
The film starts off with two distinct versions of Sisi; one with the corset on, and one that is not, the former slowly breaking free of its shackles as the film progresses. This is a story of those of the highest status still confined by patriarchal social conventions, this is a story of rebellion, but most importantly this is a story of freedom; at any cost.
Corsage is in selected cinemas from March 16, 2023