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Director's Statement
I had actually never seen the Sissi trilogy until I started doing research for CORSAGE. But of course, depictions of Sissi were everywhere nonetheless. I’ve lived in Vienna since 1996, and you see her face a hundred times in every souvenir shop. Sissi is certainly our city’s central tourist attraction. The project started out with Vicky Krieps asking me years ago if I’d like to make a Sissi film with her sometime. Because the souvenirs were all I could associate with Sissi, I replied: What on earth for? But somewhere inside me the idea was bubbling away and after a while I began to read up on her. I approached the material with an absolutely open mind, with no idea whether anything would come of it; I just wanted to see if there was something there that touched me and appealed to me. And I very quickly discovered that specific phase in Elisabeth’s life when, on the one hand, she began to rebel against all the ceremony and, on the other hand, started to withdraw and isolate herself; a time when it had quite obviously become impossible for her to squeeze herself into a predetermined template. There’s that sense of always having to live up to an outsized image of yourself, as that’s the only way for her to gain recognition and love – I found that both extremely interesting and universal. Many of the expectations Elisabeth had to contend with continue to be imposed on women today. Being beautiful is still seen as a woman’s most important and valuable trait. Historical progress has not altered that, despite the women’s movement and emancipation. Women are still considered less valuable if they are overweight or older. An attractive female partner still boosts a man’s status. The only difference between then and now is that people used to talk openly about it: “All you need to do is be appealing – that’s why I chose you, that’s why you’re here”, Franz Joseph tells Elisabeth. In 2022, women are supposed to do a great deal more and fulfil many more expectations – but also to stay beautiful, slim, and young while they’re at it. After a certain age women can’t win no matter what they do; they are accused of being vain if they get “some work done“, but people comment on their wrinkles if they don’t. That’s a particular issue for women in the public eye, like Elisabeth, but it affects all of us because they have a kind of emblematic function. I did in-depth research in particular on that phase of Elisabeth’s life, but took a lot of liberties with the content and form when turning it into a cinematic narrative. It was important to me, as ever, to know the rules so that I could break them. All the “mistakes” in that we recount or depict were not something that simply happened when we were shooting, but were instead all artistic decisions. I was never interested in making a nice, tidy biopic. But of course, it is a well-known fact that Elisabeth didn’t show her face after a certain age – that actually inspired the plot, sparking this story within me. After all, it is incredibly compelling to realize that she essentially disappeared right in front of everyone’s eyes.