She obliterates Marie Antionette and she takes aim at Sofia Coppola. Here’s her review from Slate.
Sofia Coppola is the Veruca Salt of American filmmakers. She’s the privileged little girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory whose father, a nut tycoon, makes sure his daughter wins a golden ticket to the Willie Wonka factory by buying up countless Wonka bars, which his workers methodically unwrap till they find the prize. If Coppola’s 2004 Academy Award for best original screenplay for Lost in Translation was her golden ticket to big-budget filmmaking, Marie Antoinette is her prize, a $40 million tour through the lush and hallucinatory candy land of 18th-century France. Of course, Roald Dahl’s insufferable Veruca Salt was eventually seized by angry squirrels and hurled down a garbage chute. Will Coppola suffer a similar fate when Marie Antoinette opens this Friday?
The film was simultaneously booed and given a standing ovation at Cannes, and reviews have been not just mixed but fiercely divided. Like licorice, Marie Antoinette is a confection you either love or hate, and both affects seem tied to your feeling about the director herself and her apparent identification with Louis XVI’s bride. For my part, I can definitely say that I love licorice and hate Marie Antoinette. But I’m still wrestling with the enigma of Sofia Coppola.