“Corsage” can take Vicky Krieps to the Oscars

It’s a bit like the film-event of this back to school on the scale of the Luxembourg film industry. Co-produced in Luxembourg by Bernard Michaux (for Samsa Film), “Corsage” by Austrian director Marie Kreutzer will be released this Wednesday on Luxembourg screens (only in German version with English subtitles). After Germany and Austria (early July), but well before Belgium (December 21) and France (January 25, 2023).

If we can speak of an event, it’s because Vicky Krieps is in the lead role and the rumour, like the critics for that matter, which has surrounded this film since its screening last May at the Cannes Film Festival is laudatory.

A disenchanted “Sissi”

Everyone underlines the interpretation of the Luxembourg actress. Like the prizes won on the Croisette, but also recently at the Sarajevo festival. It must be said that the granddaughter of Robert Krieps, the former president of the LSAP, is breathtaking in the skin of a disenchanted Empress Elisabeth of Austria. With Marie Kreutzer, they manage to take the myth of “Sissi” and turn it into a feminist and punk anti-fairy tale. Forget the bluettes of the late 1950s that revealed Romy Schneider. Forget the grandiose cardboard decorations lit like an advertisement for cereals or even the fusional couple formed by a flourishing “Sissi” with her emperor husband.

Here, the setting is austere, the decrepit walls and some tiles are broken. Like the life of a “Sissi” who suffocates a little more every minute in a golden cage imbued with sexism, locked in a sartorial corset, but also an increasingly tight societal corset.

As you will have understood, with “Corsage”, we are far from the majority of current productions, those which abound on the platforms, where we take the spectator by the hand throughout the film, highlighting the important elements so as not to risk lose her. Here, we are in an auteur film, all in subtlety and unsaid. The kind of production that can appeal to many moviegoers.

Quoted by American media

This has also been the case in the festivals where “Corsage” has been presented in recent months. It should still be in the coming weeks, in New York (September 30-October 16) or Toronto (September 8-18) where the film will be presented in the coming days. Considered a springboard to the Oscars for American productions, the Canadian festival could also prove crucial for Marie Kreutzer’s film. With a view in particular to a selection for the Oscars, in the category of best foreign film. The film, which will be released in the United States on December 23, is, in any case, one of the names cited by the American media which make predictions about the prestigious ceremony almost year-round.

But at this level, the surprise could perhaps come from Vicky Krieps. Since the last Cannes Film Festival, we knew that the US press present in France had found the Luxembourg actress bluffing in her role of “Sissi”. Four months later, the soufflé has not subsided. Thus, the famous magazine Variety places her in the race for the nomination for best actress. In the middle of Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, etc. While the more independent media IndieWire even places it among its five favorites.

The announcement of the nominations is obviously still very far away (January 24, 2023), the ceremony a little further still (March 12, 2023). But finding yourself in such a position already means something. “Corsage” is simply Vicky Krieps’ best role since “Phantom Thread” (2017), the film by Paul Thomas Anderson which revealed her internationally.