CANNES, France -- When you are the third generation of a celebrated Hollywood family, when your father's an eminent director, people tend to underestimate you. It's been happening to Sofia Coppola all her life, and, frankly, it's fine by her.

	Francois Mori, Associated Press Kirsten Dunst, left, and director Sofia Coppola arrive for the screening of their film "Marie-Antoinette" at the international film festival in Cannes. Click photo for larger image.

"I think it's an advantage," she says, smiling. "If people don't expect much, even though you have to work harder to prove you're not a spoiled brat, if you just do OK, it's considered good. I like being under the radar. I'd rather be the kid who got into the grown-up section at Cannes than one of the big, expected films. It's better to be an underdog and hope."

At first glance, it's easy to see why people might underestimate Coppola, whose Kirsten Dunst-starring historical drama, "Marie-Antoinette," premiered here (to something far less than universal praise) Wednesday night. Dressed in jeans, white shirt and flip-flops, she looks younger than someone who recently celebrated her 35th birthday.

And unlike many of her hyped-up directing peers, Coppola projects an air of casual, unruffled calm and, refreshingly, is not stuck on herself. But the consideration that causes her to uncap a bottle of water for a visitor and allow a room service waiter to go on and on about his relatives in America doesn't prevent her from being determined as well as intelligent and thoughtful.

"You don't have to be a yeller to direct; you can still be strong and get what you need done as long as you're clear about what you want," she says, yes, quietly. "I guess I have a bossy side, but I'm polite about it."

Ready or not, Coppola's days of being underestimated are over. First, she won a screenwriting Oscar and became the first American woman to be nominated for best director, for "Lost in Translation." Now, with the quietly exuberant "Marie-Antoinette," costarring the wild mixture of Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Judy Davis, Marianne Faithfull and Asia Argento, she has even bent history to her will, disarmingly blending her exquisitely modern sensibility with a potent re-creation of the salad days of the last queen of France. This is accomplished, impressive filmmaking on both an epic and an intimate scale.

Kind of like "The O.C." set in Versailles, "Marie-Antoinette," which is based on Antonia Fraser's authoritative biography, reminds us that Marie and her husband, Louis XVI, were real people, ages 18 and 20, when he became king and they entered history's stage.

"I liked the idea that she was a real girl, someone who didn't like to do schoolwork, that there were all these teenagers running around in Versailles being in charge," Coppola says. "Now, looking back, I see my films [starting with "The Virgin Suicides"] as a trilogy about characters who are all trying to grow up and find their identity."

Coppola first thought of doing a film about Marie-Antoinette when production designer and family friend Dean Tavoularis talked to her about Fraser's book, about the life of someone who went from Austria to Versailles when she was 14 and had a marriage that was not consummated for years. Coppola optioned the book, began a screenplay, took a break to write what became "Lost in Translation," then returned to this story that "kept nagging at me."

"I liked the idea just as a challenge to myself; I liked that it was so different for me," the director explains. "I'm not excited by huge crowds; I like more intimate stories. This was so big [a $40-million budget], with a couple of hundred extras where I'd never worked with any before, it was sort of daunting."

Also, Coppola says, she liked that "Marie-Antoinette" was different in another way.

"This was something I hadn't seen a lot of in the movies of my contemporaries, who are shooting super-realistic scenes in 7-Elevens. This was kind of a reaction to that."

Coppola was determined to shoot at Versailles, and she received unprecedented use of the palace, including being able to film at the Petit Trianon and its fragile theater, where the queen put on plays.

Although their personal and moviemaking styles are poles apart, her passionate determination seems to be a legacy from Francis Ford Coppola, the director's father.

"Even if it seemed impossible, he'd find some way to do it," the younger Coppola remembers. "He seemed very heroic out in the Philippines, getting his movie made."

Now, looking back at all the time spent on her father's sets, including the Philippine staging ground for "Apocalypse Now," it seems to Sofia Coppola that "we were always, like, in training for film. I remember him talking to me about screenwriting when I was a little kid, telling me what made a good second act. Who talks to a 12-year-old girl like that?"

One father did, and one daughter remembered.