CORSAGE

Wednesday, October 12 – Renoir Theatre – 8:10 pm
(Screening ends at 10:20 pm)
+ Short Film Presentation: THE ONE WHO NEVER WATCHED FRIENDS

FICTION / DRAMA, BIOPIC
WORLD CINEMA CO-PRODUCED BY FRANCE

Presented in Association with:
MK2 Films
IFC Films
Air Tahiti Nui
Women in Film

West Coast Premiere | Official Austrian Entry –  Academy Awards 2023
Austria, Luxemburg, Germany, France, Hungary | 2022 | Drama, Biopic | 113 min | In English, German, French and Hungarian with English subtitles

Directed by: Marie Kreutzer
Written by: Marie Kreutzer
Produced by: Alexander Glehr & Johanna Scherz (Film AG Produktion) Janine Jackowski & Jonas Dornbach (Komplizen Film), Jani Thiltges, Claude Waringo (Samasa Film), Jean-Christophe Reymond & Amaury Ovise (Kazak Productions), Vicky Krieps,  ZDF, Arte
Cinematography: Judith Kaufmann
Film Editing: Ulrike Kofler
Original Score: Camille
Cast: Vicky Krieps (Elisabeth), Florian Teichtmeister (Emperor Franz Joseph), Katharina Lorenz (Marie Festetics), Jeanne Werner (Ida Ferenczy), Finnegan Oldfield (Louis le Prince), Colin Morgan (Bay Middleton), Alma Hasun (Fanny Feifalik)
International Sales: MK2 Films
U.S. Distributor: IFC Films
U.S. Release: December 23, 2022 

Vicky Krieps is nothing short of breathtaking in Marie Kreutzer‘s scintillating period piece, Corsage. In fact, it was at her behest that the director even considered making a film about Empress Elisabeth of Austria — whose life has already been immortalized in a trilogy of kitschy 1950s “Sissi” movies, starring Romy Schneider, which are practically cult films in France. Those baubles couldn’t be further from this sublime opus, which portrays the young empress with a hunger for knowledge and a zest for life in the face of suffocating conventions. This fictional account of her later years, peppered with bold stylistic and historical anachronisms, begins on Christmas Eve of 1877, as Elisabeth turns 40. Once idolized for her great beauty, she is now officially deemed an old hag, and launches into a draconian regimen of starvation diets, grueling gymnastics, meticulous hair styling and, most importantly, daily measurements of her waist, cinching her whalebone corsetry tighter and tighter to ensure that her bodice — or corsage in French —is so tiny that it may one day disappear.

Austrian writer/director Marie Kreutzer studied literature and dramaturgy at the Vienna Film Academy. After writing and directing a half dozen shorts, she directed 30 episodes of the groundbreaking Austrian series Sendung ohne Namen (2003-2012). Her first feature, The Fatherless (2011), won the Grand Prize at Austria’s Diagonale film festival and a Best First Feature Honorable Mention in Berlin. That was followed by Guber is Leaving (2015); the comedy We Used to Be Cool (2016), which also starred Vicky Krieps; and the Austrian TV movie Die Notlüge (2017).  Her next feature, The Ground Beneath Your Feet (2019), was screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Award at L.A. Outfest. The following year she collaborated on the script for Ulrike Kofler’s What We Wanted (2020), then wrote and directed the TV movie Vier (2022).  Corsage premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section, where Vicky Krieps easily made off with the Best Performance prize.

The film has been selected to represent Austria at the Academy Awards in the best international feature category.