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Corsage Movie Review

Corsage is a 2022 historical drama film directed by Marie Kreutzer and starring Vicky Krieps. It is a period piece that is more engaging than expected.

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“They should invent a heater that converts warm air into cold“

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Faced with a future of strict ceremonies and royal duties, Empress Elisabeth of Austria rebels against her public image and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy. This is a different than usual biopic and costume drama in a sense that it’s far brisker in pacing and thus far more involving to viewers. The highlight is its less serious tone that really worked to set it apart from many other similar movies.

Mixing real history with revisionism, Corsage is clever enough not to resort to too many political speeches. It is much more concerned with family drama and the empress herself and her own issues, which was a terrific choice that paid off in terms of emotional investment.

Vicky Krieps of ‘Phantom Thread’ fame is stellar in the main role of Elisabeth of Austria. She gave a layered, excellent performance and she demanded the screen in every single sequence. The husband character is also well developed, but all the others failed to make an impact due to much less screen time devoted to them.

Corsage truly came alive during the outdoor excursions and the moments with the filmmaker where he explained his new technology to the protagonist. Whenever the film focused on inventions and technology, it was wonderful and quite witty in dialogue that was meant clearly for us as audiences of the modern era.

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The overall storyline is nothing particularly remarkable and the movie is not original in anything that it does, but it’s competently made throughout and it features not only outstanding dialogue, but nuanced characterization and acting along with some very touching moments as well as funny lines of dialogue. This lighter tone was by far the best aspect of Corsage while the cinematography, score and directing are uniformly strong as well. It just needed more in terms of story and a better ending as the one that we got was not great.