Marie Antoinette is one of my favorite movies; every time I watch it my heart expands like a soap-bubble and I get cartoon sparkles in the corners of my eyes. But the problem is that I can’t make it 20 minutes into the film without developing a specific, intense, and pricey appetite. Usually when I want snacks during a movie I rummage through the cabinets until I find organic raisin bran (my mother’s house), Sun Chips (my boyfriend’s apartment), or stale Pepperidge Farm cookies (my own place). This strategy doesn’t work during Marie Antoinette, though. It’s impossible to ignore the adoring fetishism of the camera panning over whipped cream, ripe berries, and pastel petit fours. Coppola slowly takes over your brain like a seeping perfume, and before long the act of eating something hearty and nutritious (raw almonds, a Greek salad, a tuna sandwich) seems analogous to eating a boiled shoe.

I remember reading that in the Victorian Era, certain stylish precursors to modern anorectics would try to survive on only delicate, beautifully-presented foods, so that their sustenance would both influence and reflect their personalities. And the sweet personalities in turn influenced physical appearance. So, the more sugary the Pain Perdue, the more limpid the eyes, the curlier the hair. It actually seems logical, and a movie like Marie Antoinette (though from a different time period) only emphasizes this attitude: you are what you eat, so eat only grace and charm, only eat cake.