I think I liked it because it gave me a different motivation for her playland of peasant life at Versailles. From visiting the lush palace, I had assumed the Let Them Eat Cakery attitude of mockery in Marie's pretending to be a peasant, with an entire village set up for her faux-poverty pretence on the vast grounds.
But the movie easily portrayed a different option ... that the peasant village was a true escape from the stiffling ritual and empty luxury of palace life, an escape to the true happiness of a simpler existence that could reasonably be longed for after years of pampering and vacuousity at the pinnacle of the French court.
I found that rather sweet, and I liked Kirsten Dunst in the role.
Not a candle to The Queen, but hardly the disaster I was led to expect.
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