Early in Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, Empress Elizabeth, or Sisi, (Vicky Krieps), steps out of her carriage, greeted with the flourish of a royal welcome. She delicately balances a lace fan in front of her mouth, which is bent into a wry smile. The proximity of the fan and her sly disdain articulates this woman’s testing relationship to concealment; any moment the fan could slip even half a centimetre, peeling back a layer of discomfort to reveal something itching beneath the surface of each conversation.
Corsage traces the ragged edges of Empress Elizabeth’s time as monarch of Austria. Renowned for her beauty and her slim figure, the film captures her being gradually pushed out of court, encouraged to stop performing official duties. Kreutzer seems to be primarily concerned with the physical cost of this obscuring. She traces the fault line between private and public and exactly how it radiates pain, whether that be the bruises which dapple Elizabeth’s back and hips or the cast clinging to her left ankle. When her lady in waiting returns from first playing the Empress to a rapt crowd, she spews vomit, newly gripped by the unrelenting corset — a harsh initiation.
Other times this cinematic exploration feels less carefully observed, with Sisi wandering through the psychiatric ward of a hospital before pausing to mournfully observe a patient cruelly strapped to the bed, straining to break free behind a netted window. She wanders over to the metal bathtubs that are containing women, one suffering from “adultery” and one from grief after the death of her child. She understands these women, she is these women.
Still, even in these more obvious moments, Vicky Krieps’ cunning, coy way of engaging the camera, tugging a sharp wit out of the occasionally heavy-handed script, imbues these moments with a careful, echoing earnestness. As an actress, she displays an impressive physical prowess, willing to stretch and coil around uncomfortable moments, letting her tense jaw and squared shoulders speak to her frustration, maneuvering around inexperienced maids and men, balletic in her precision, before emitting unprompted sparks of rebellion and outrage in the form of a middle finger, an eye roll, the flick of a cigarette. Yet the story quickly gives her more space to unravel, spinning in wider, uncharted circles (by the closing credits, this means literal circles).
Krieps’ knowingness is aided by a filmmaker who is intent on elevating this biopic with a sense of modernity. Camille composes a score that is a series of rounded notes decorated with a sharp bass that is equal parts sad and silly. The story itself is served by various needle drops that seek to cut to real, near emotion.
Sisi is desperate to impart some image of who she really is, squirming under the threat of being dramatically misremembered. She tells the painter to construct her portrait from the other paintings hanging in the palace, acutely aware of his inability to see her. She doesn’t have an affair with Bay (Colin Morgan), the riding instructor, opting to have a quiet moment of clarity with someone who understands her, admitting she would prefer to look at him looking at her. The only respite offered is the invention of the film camera, offering glimpses of self-expression. She haphazardly skips across a field, she screams – her face caught in a moment of gleeful abandon as her fists sit curled at her side. Gradually these moments are threaded through the film, kernels of truth hidden amongst her receding life. At one point, the camera operator holds the film negatives up to the light, a string of static pictures is caught in the sun, movement tucked into the space between each shot. Sisi is there, flimsy in the battering wind, but real.
As Sisi purposely reduces her public role, she reveals more of herself to her inner circle. Smoking a lavender cigarette with a wounded soldier on a hospital bed, gripping her son’s hand at the dinner table. Finally, she wields the weighted scissors to cut her waist-long hair, the bulk of her duty reduced to the locks which mockingly hang from her chair. When her daughter Valerie (Rosa Hajjaj) visits her in the bath she gasps, struck by the sudden change, letting this drastic reveal further colour the condemnation she showers on her mother.
Regardless of the honesty Sisi extends to those around her, Valerie stands as proof of a more fundamental failure. She rejects the recklessness of her mother, imploring her to follow rules, to stop embarrassing her with unladylike behaviour, to get up from the bed and stop smoking with the soldier. She prefers the performance of Elisabeth to the person of Sisi and, unrestrained by social graces, readily admits so.
By the end of the film, Sisi is robbed of the chance to introduce herself meaningfully to the world, instead she carries the feeling of who she is onwards. Unburdened by the mountains of hair, free from the cramped metal bathtub, she plunges into the sea, arms outstretched as they were when she swam with her cousin. A historical rewrite that chooses to engage in a freeing hopelessness, this end sees Sisi dive into the endless blue, to discover what it has to reveal, what it has been obscuring.
