What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that there is brief female toplessness in what looks like a drug-sodden aristocratic orgy. The (unhappily married) heroine tries to have sex with her boyfriend; later her husband does the same with an actress. Violence includes shooting, beating, and kicking, soldiers executing a man, and a public whipping, branding, and execution by guillotine, though the filmmakers refrain from plunging us into all the ugly details; it's mostly quick MTV-style edits. One character is a corrupt, sexually active Catholic cardinal. Kids making the real-life Jeanne de la Motte-Valois their school-report heroine should know that historians (and even earlier movie adaptations) regard her negatively -- a dodgy con-artist, rather than the romanticized avenger admired here.
- Families can talk about the real-life circumstances of the French Revolution, and how the incidents of this film figure into it. You could research the fall of the monarchy, and perhaps fact-check whether this movie exaggerated the importance of the "necklace affair" or not, and maybe look into other screen portrayals or biographies of Marie Antoinette and her downfall. Did she get a royal raw deal, or was she asking for it? Are there any similar celebrities (or first ladies) around today?