CORSAGE – Review by Susan Wloszczyna

Lushly decorated and costumed, while cheekily anachronistic with its use of 21st century pop songs, salty language, rude gestures and the like, Corsage takes a look at the later life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, aka “Sissi” (1837-1898), played by a suitably regal and linguistically talented Vicky Krieps (Bergman Island, Phantom Thread), who speaks at least three languages here including Hungarian, and also takes an executive producer credit. In fact, Krieps reportedly first proposed the project to Austrian writer-director Marie Kreutzer.

Some might compare Empress Sissi to Diana the Princess of Wales, who also had an eating disorder and had to share her husband — the Emperor Franz Joseph (played handsomely by Florian Teichtmeister — with another woman. Sissi also uses rings that dangle from her ceiling as a form of exercise and she squeezes into a corset that binds her so tightly that she can barely breathe.

But this witty period drama finds the Empress instructing her staff to lace her bodice – or “corsage,” as it is called – ever tighter. She enjoys flirtations with other men as she travels to England and Bavaria. While visiting hospitals in her finery, she shares perfumed sweets with the patients. She watches a woman who is chained up and screaming, and is presumed to be mad.

Perhaps Empress Elisabeth might have been in that position as well if she hadn’t had the opportunities offered by her noble birth. Krieps keeps her chin up for the most part but she is bound by invisible chains and wishes she could leave them behind.