Corsage (2022)

Corsage makes a familiar royal portrait feel startlingly alive, not by polishing Empress Elisabeth into a legend, but by letting her contradictions breathe—vain and wounded, funny and furious, trapped in lace yet aching for air. Marie Kreutzer directs with a sly, modern pulse, slipping in anachronistic touches and sharp humor that puncture the museum-glass solemnity most period dramas settle for, while still honoring the ache underneath. At the center, Vicky Krieps gives a performance of bracing intimacy: you can feel every tightened corset string as both costume and quiet act of war against a world that’s decided a woman’s worth has an expiration date. It’s not a comfort-watch and it won’t satisfy viewers looking for stately reverence or tidy historical lessons, but if you want a historical drama that feels daring, intimate, and bitingly contemporary, this one lingers like a bruise you can’t stop pressing.

Corsage is clearly trying to strip the Empress-myth down to a modern-feeling portrait of a woman trapped by image, aging, and a suffocating court, and Vicky Krieps does a lot of heavy lifting with a raw, watchable performance. The problem is the film leans hard into deliberate anachronisms and historical bending, which will either feel like a smart provocation or like the movie is poking you in the ribs every few minutes. It also moves in a moody, sometimes trudging rhythm that can seem uneven, more a series of pointed moments than a satisfying narrative drive. If you want a traditionally told, historically grounded period drama with clean storytelling, this probably isn’t your night; if you’re up for an art-house character study that prioritizes vibe and ideas over accuracy and momentum, it has real bite.