Kirsten Dunst, left, and Sofia Coppola at the press conference for Coppola's film Marie Antoinette. (AP photo)

CANNES -- Marie Antoinette director Sofia Coppola, in her first film since the Oscar-nominated Lost In Translation, endured a few boos, but calmly persevered in the midst of the madness of the Cannes Film Festival yesterday.

The boos, along with sarcastic whistles, came at the early morning press screening for the film (it played last night as a gala in competition and was enthusiastically cheered, as are most films that play to the black-tie and gown crowd).

"That's disappointing to hear," Coppola told her press conference about the critical reaction. "(But) I think it's better to get a reaction -- that people like it or really don't like it. It's better than a mediocre response."

Marie Antoinette stars American starlet Kirsten Dunst in the title role as France's doomed queen during the French Revolution. Judging by the comments that accompanied the show of anger at the press screening, the dissenters were French.

Inspired by Antonia Fraser's best-seller, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Coppola is mucking around with French history in a breezy English-language American movie that includes pop tunes on the soundtrack, along with music from the 18th century.

But Coppola denied she was trying to make any political statements, either historical or metaphorically as a contemporary analysis of the French.

"I wasn't making a political movie about the French Revolution," Coppola said almost shyly at the press conference, where her parents, filmmakers Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola, were huddled on the sidelines with son Roman Coppola and other family members. At one point, Eleanor Coppola snuck down in front with a video camera to film her daughter talking.

"I was doing a portrait of the character of Marie Antoinette and my opinions are in the film," Sofia Coppola said. "To me, before I worked on the story, she was a symbol of decadence and frivolity and the end of an era for France. It was very interesting to read and research more about Marie Antoinette and find out more about the human experience of this young girl who went to Versailles (from Austria) when she was 14 and how she developed in the court of Versailles.

"I don't find it's my role to make political statements. I think there are elements of the story that I feel are relevant to today, but I'm not going to go as far as to talk about that in public."

One questioner suggested that the story of Marie Antoinette is not much different from that of the characters in Desperate Housewives.

"I've never seen Desperate Housewives," Coppola said with a smile, "but I thought: Here's this lonely housewife whose husband isn't paying attention to her and so she's staying out partying and going shopping. We've heard that story before. I thought it was interesting to learn more about her, where that was really coming from."

This is the second time Dunst has starred in a Coppola film. She played a major role in Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's directorial debut. She's the only director who makes her feel completely like herself in a role, Dunst said, and Coppola also has a role to play in putting young women's stories on the screen.

"Sofia is the only one telling intimate stories about women and what they are going through in their personal lives," Dunst said (although Coppola later demurred, saying there are other directors who do that in America).

"There's plenty of mopey-man movies," Dunst continued." There are no movies about girls and being introspective and their struggles and their relationships in the world. Sofia is really the only director that is doing that."