After an elaborate application process, Empress Elisabeth of Austria hires Countess Irma as her new lady-in-waiting and takes her to her summer residence on Corfu. As the two women become closer there, this soon leads to tensions back in Vienna.
Acting
Sandra Hüller's deadpan reactions to royal absurdity are worth admission alone.
Direction
Finsterwalder's Corfu sequences feel like a fever dream the court is trying to wake from.
Costume
Elisabeth's increasingly unhinged island wardrobe vs. Vienna's suffocating corsets.
Director
Frauke Finsterwalder
Susanne Wolff
Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Sandra Hüller
Irma Sztáray
Tom Rhys Harries
Smythe
Johanna Wokalek
Countess Marie Festetics
Angela Winkler
Princess Ludovika of Bavaria
Stefan Kurt
Count of Berzeviczy
Maresi Riegner
Marie
Georg Friedrich
Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria
Sophie Hutter
Fritzi
Sibylle Canonica
Maria Sztáray
Markus Schleinzer
Kaiser Franz Joseph
Anthony Calf
Earl Spencer
Annette Badland
Queen Victoria
Anne Müller
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sandra Hüller filmed this immediately before Anatomy of a Fall, making 2023 her year of playing women trapped by other people's narratives.
The real Countess Sztáray's memoirs were heavily censored; this film imagines what she couldn't say. The Achilleion palace still stands on Corfu, now a casino.
AT
DE
