You have to give writer/director Sofia Coppola points for originality. Her Oscar-winning

Lost in Translation

about a bored American actor stuck making a commercial in Japan turned into a deservedly critical and popular hit. Now, for her follow-up, she tackles the 18th century teenaged queen who found herself trapped in the virtual museum known as Versailles, unable to live the kind of normal life teens with hoop dresses and 6 foot tall wigs apparently craved in those days. That's at least according to this cotton candy account that plays loosely with the truth in trying to be hip, contemporary and pink (look closely and you will see a pair of Nike sneakers(!) just that color in her closet). According to legend (as filtered thru Coppola), Marie (Kirsten Dunst) was just like any other kid who wanted to party, but was virtually entombed like a girly King Tut in her palace. Stuck in a passionless marriage to King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) who couldn't get a hard-on for seven years, Marie became the subject of gossip that she would never be able to produce an heir to the throne. Much like Princess Diana, she was plagued by endless scandals and hated by certain members of the French Royal Court who tried to make her their scapegoat for a poor society ready to erupt into a revolution. What she really wanted was just to "fit in." Coppola, actually shooting on real locations in France, has made a movie designed to relate to today's disaffected youth and should be given a good degree of credit for taking a stodgy, overstuffed period costume picture and cleverly scoring it with songs like Bow Wow Wow's

I Want Candy

. Sure to be pounded on by some critics for her audacious, if uneven approach in breathing life into this genre, Coppola's own maverick attitude toward naysayers might mirror the famous line Marie is reported to have uttered about

her

detractors. "Let them eat cake!"