Review: Vicky Krieps Gallops, Dances, and Flips the Bird, in ‘Corsage,’ a Stunning Modern-Day Rendering of Empress Sisi

Vicky Krieps: how does she do it? It’s tempting to call her effortless, since her characters tend to have such natural charisma (Alma in “Phantom Thread”) and palpable artistic sensibilities (Chris in “Bergman Island”). But her performance in Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage” is a different animal. She inhabits her Empress Elisabeth with a physical, rebellious style that suggests what a Hepburn (Audrey or Katharine) might have done with this role in the present day. Hopefully, like Krieps, they’d curse, smoke, and give the middle finger when exiting a formal dinner of buffoons. 

Kreutzer’s film—Austria’s entry to the Academy Awards for ‘Best International Film’—is an unruly revisionist period piece which makes crafty use of music and movement to reimagine the life of someone who didn’t so much take what she wanted; rather, she captured her free will and made sure no one could touch it. Some films set in the past invest too much in reinventing what the past looked like, and it detracts from character development. Here, Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel” (2021) comes to mind, trying to depict a suffocating world in such great detail that it’s so stuck in that past, obsessing over the glory of battle and ye-thee-master language of the time. Not so for “Corsage,” which slides in iconoclastic touches (a middle finger, The Rolling Stones) to make this an indelible story about modern society, too. 

Krieps Adds the Necessary Flavor to Reluctant Royalty

There’s plenty resonant about the Empress’s story, without Kreutzer or Krieps having to whack us over the head. Nicknamed Sisi, Kreutzer has said that the Empress is the main tourist attraction where the director grew up. The film isn’t exactly—or only—a biography of Sisi. Yet in depicting this tale as old as time—a woman who’s expected to be a doting mother and obedient spouse, and not much else—Kreutzer and Krieps provide a model for how things might have been. It ends tragically, but on Sisi’s terms, and her withdrawing from life as a royal and a mother is an exercise of free will. The most radical jump she makes is at the end, and it’s an appropriate, if bittersweet coda for Sisi. 

Krieps gives a full-bodied performance, constantly in motion and always moving with purpose. She screams, jumps, and rides a horse with abandon. And her performance continues during the end credits, with a hypnotic dance routine that stands second only to “White Noise” for the best credit sequence of the year. Krieps is usually able to say so much with the slightest grin or subtle stare. And while that’s still the case here, Krieps’ Sisi is a force of nature acting out not to prove a point, but to build towards an escape. In one wrenching scene, she flies off her horse, landing with a thud. The camera briefly shows a horse, then fades to the next scene with the sound of a gunshot. Sisi is crying hysterically on the bed, wishing that it was she who died, and not her horse. 

Calling to Mind Old Hollywood Starlets

The thing is, Sisi means that both because she loves her horse (and two dogs, who her husband’s jealous of) and hates the ritualized life she’s living. Falling off her horse might have been an accident, but jumping out the window (which earns only a minor calf injury) was not. Sisi eliminates any ambiguity about her motives when she tells her cousin that she tried to die, but lacked the expertise. Despite her rebellious nature, she’s no radical per se. Sisi smokes, has affairs (she won’t sleep with her husband because she doesn’t want another child with him), cuts her hair, and really just wants to be able to eat dessert. That she’s expected to maintain a certain weight to fit into a corset is symbolic of the greater oppression—lack of control and the need to conform—surrounding her. 

The nature of her protests calls to mind those Old Hollywood starlets who’d go toe-to-toe with the boys and beat—or at least compete with—them at their own game. Krieps’ Sisi is a tough dame, a fighter like the razor-sharp Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday” (1940), fiercely-independent like Katharine Hepburn in “Woman of the Year” (1942). She’s reluctant royalty resisting companionship like Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961); and, above all, she’s played by one of the most gifted performers on the planet. Hopefully she won’t need to wait another five decades for an Oscar nomination like the inimitable Isabelle Huppert, a fellow European arthouse stalwart finally nominated in 2017 for “Elle,” who should’ve won decades ago. In a year when Cate Blanchette is earning justifiably rave reviews for her unscrupulous composer in “TÁR,” let’s hope Krieps’ more playful, yet similarly-committed performance isn’t overlooked. 

Director Marie Kreutzer Retells the Story with Humor and Enthusiasm

Comparisons aside, Krieps is her own person, and her interpretation of Sisi is rich with paradox and bursting with life. The film, which opens in select theaters on December 23rd, doesn’t sentimentalize Sisi’s struggles or her victories. What it does best is retell a tragic story with brash humor and giddy enthusiasm, revealing the power of fiction to rework history. Sisi’s life and death may be fixed in history, and in the minds of those who grew up learning about her. But modern audiences can now accept Krieps’ Sisi, someone who lived and died on her own terms, listened to The Rolling Stones, and loved animals more than people. In other words, she’s one of us. 

“Corsage,” an IFC Films release, opens exclusively in theaters on December 23rd.