Opening in Spain on December 2, Rebel Empress, originally titled Corsage, has traveled through the festival circuit including Cannes, Toronto, and San Sebastian. Directed by Marie Kreutzer, the film centers on Elizabeth of Austria, better known as Sissi. Kreutzer’s portrayal diverges sharply from the Austrian trilogy that featured Romy Schneider in the 1950s, where romance often softened the character’s depth and erased the harsher edges of her life.
Kreutzer’s Sissi, deftly performed by Vicky Krieps, presents a woman in her forties who feels overwhelmed by public scrutiny and personal unhappiness. A free spirit living in a world that restricts her, she remains a force of nature confined by societal cages. Compromises, obligations, and relentless surveillance distort her self-image and threaten to crush her. Yet she asserts agency over her body, her loves, her battles, and her yearnings, choosing moments of defiance and escape as long as she can resist surrender.
goodbye to fairy tales
Corsage intersects with another contemporary portrayal of Sissi in the series Empress on Netflix, which leans kinder but does not escape critique. It shares a drive to reframe female figures who actually existed, moving away from idealized mythologies toward portraits that reveal inner life and relentless grief behind desires for freedom and an authentic identity. Films increasingly seek to depict women from less flattering angles, shedding light on what runs through their minds and emotions when opportunities strike and then vanish.
In summary, these works offer fairer representations. A clear exemplar is Spencer (2021) by Pablo Larraín, featuring Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales. The director bypasses a conventional biography to visually isolate the discomfort, loneliness, and persistent sense of misplacement in the narrative. Diana, much like Sissi, endured immense public adoration alongside intense scrutiny. Larraín has explored similar terrain in other projects, including Jackie (2016), which follows Jacqueline Kennedy during the crisis hours after her husband’s assassination. These films push beyond biographical beats to foreground psychological dimensions that challenge myth and celebrate human complexity.
The conversation grows more provocative with titles such as Blonde (2022), which portrays Marilyn Monroe with a blunt, unvarnished lens. Directed by Andrew Dominik and adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, the film resists a traditional arc of victimhood and power. It emphasizes the harsh realities of a life lived under relentless sexism and public gaze, offering a harder, less forgiving view of fame and agency. Blonde leans into the tension between personal power and societal force, favoring truth over comforting myths.
There is a notable precedent in Marie Antoinette (2006), Sofia Coppola’s bold entry into this storytelling space. Coppola reframed the young queen’s experience with a visually playful, pop-infused style while preserving the core tension between youthful desire and a rigid court. The director recently shared a glimpse from her next project, Priscilla, a film about Priscilla Presley inspired by the memoir Elvis and Me. Starring Cailee Spaeny and led by Coppola, the project signals continued interest in portraying iconic women through intimate, contemporary lenses. While details remain scarce, the project promises to explore the personal side of a famous union against a backdrop of fame.
The pattern suggests one overarching theme: films about women who confront power and societal expectations tend to reveal less about the fairy tale and more about the cost of desire and freedom. When directors foreground interior life and real struggles, audiences gain a more nuanced picture of these figures, moving beyond myth toward a richer understanding of their humanity. In this light, Sissi’s story joins a broader conversation about how cinema can reexamine celebrated women by showing vulnerability, resilience, and the quiet battles waged behind public gaze.