Marie

ALBANY, N.Y. - The "Marie Antoinette" teaser is one of the best. Kristen Dunst runs around Versailles, playing with sparklers and dashing through gardens in the pre-dawn like a teenager on prom night. The montage is set to New Order's "Age of Content," a mix of fast guitar and mournful synths which is now one of my iPod's most played songs. I loved it, and so did several of my friends.

We counted down the moments until "Marie Antoinette" opened in theaters. We cringed when we heard reports that some bbooed the film at Cannes. Roger Ebert said it was just a couple people, and the French like to boo films anyway, we said. We were a tad baffled when a second trailer was released, with more running around Versailles but this time with the god-awful Strokes in the background. We wondered when the reviews were very mixed.

Finally, we got to see the movie.

Sadly, it wasn't great. The plot wanders, and even a wonderful soundtrack of ambient and new wave music (that Strokes song excluded) can't make up for a lack of resolution. The movie's more a mood piece than anything else.

Last week in Scranton, my friend Nazy told me, "prepare to be disappointed," and I was.

If the movie didn't quite work, there were still many scenes that brought out the same feelings of young restlessness that made Sofia Coppola's last film "Lost in Translation," a touchstone for many of my friends. We identified with both the heroine and Bill Murray's character, the uncertainty of what to do with life and also the perils of what can happen if we choose incorrectly.

And that was worth the price of admission.