Empress Elisabeth of Austria Vicky Krieps is semi-estranged from her philandering husband Emperor Franz Joseph Florian Teichtmeister, and together they reluctantly mark her 40th birthday, a public celebration that masks a home thick with loneliness and unspoken friction. Elisabeth grapples with a sense of fading beauty and a stubborn ache for agency, turning inward to control her life in small, precise ways—most notably by obsessively managing her weight. The strain of court life intensifies when Elisabeth’s youngest daughter, Marie Valerie, falls ill after Elisabeth takes her for a nighttime ride, a moment that sows discord between Elisabeth and Franz and sets a tentative, fragile tension between the pair.
Rudolf Aaron Friesz invites Elisabeth and Marie Valerie on a journey that becomes a stage for Elisabeth’s flirtations and fantasies. On the road she tests the limits of companionship and vanity, engaging in a flirtation with her riding instructor Bay Colin Morgan and enjoying a breezy encounter with the aspiring filmmaker Louis Le Prince Finnegan Oldfield. Bay’s eventual rebuff—an acknowledgment of Elisabeth’s vanity—leaves her momentarily chastened, yet the spark of desire remains a persistent echo as she returns to Vienna. There she attempts to physically reconnect with Franz, but the effort only underscores the growing distance between them. Rumors of Franz’s affair with a much younger woman intensify Elisabeth’s sense of isolation and disturbance.
When Rudolf returns to Prague to begin his military education, Elisabeth’s sense of urgency about leaving Vienna grows. She voices a desire to depart with Valerie, a move that further angers Franz and triggers a sharp confrontation. The argument escalates, and in a moment of desperation Elisabeth moments the line between peril and hope by jumping out of a window, surviving with only minor injuries but wounded in ways that go beyond the physical.
Elisabeth seeks solace in Bavaria, spending time with her cousin Ludwig II, a figure she regards as a kindred spirit in their shared reverence for a romantic, irreducible freedom. Yet that visit fails to lift her spirits in any lasting way, and she remains unable to influence the broader currents of the world around Sarajevo and the war she cannot easily escape. In a bid to placate her, Franz finances an extension of the mental ward she frequently visits, a gesture that speaks to the complex, tangled web of care, control, and dependency that defines their relationship.
Health continues to plague Elisabeth, and she is prescribed heroin in hope of easing her body’s strain. The drug ushers in a curious sense of liberation as she cuts her hair, feeling a renewed sense of self and possibility. To manage her public image, she enlists her lady-in-waiting, Marie Festetics, to stand in for her in public appearances, and she commands Marie to impose strict dietary limits—an inversion of the very autonomy she seeks. Elisabeth also negotiates her husband’s public life by inviting Franz’s rumored mistress into the palace circle, a bold, albeit fraught, attempt to reclaim some measure of agency within the narrow margins of imperial life.
Trips continue to punctuate Elisabeth’s long arc of longing. A voyage to Ancona with her entourage—where a veiled Marie travels beside her—turns poignant as Elisabeth, buoyed by fierce determination and fragility in equal measure, chooses one last, defiant act: she dives into the sea, an impulsive gesture that crystallizes the tension between her craving for freedom and the weight of her duties.
Throughout the film, Elisabeth’s struggle is framed by the people around her: Bay Middleton and Louis Le Prince offer glimpses of joy and risk; Rudolf serves as a constant reminder of duty and lineage; and Ludwig II anchors her in a world where charisma and tragedy collide. The narrative is intimate and observational, favoring a lens that captures Elisabeth’s quiet revolutions as much as her outward spectacle. The result is a portrait of a woman who both commands and constrains her own fate, navigating the spaces between duty, desire, and the inexorable tides of history.
In the end, Elisabeth’s story is one of continued pursuit: a chase for autonomy within a life that both elevates and confines her. The film never pretends to render her choices as simple triumphs or tragic downfalls; instead, it presents a continuous, human struggle to shape meaning in a world that never stops asking for more from a woman who has long been defined by the gaze of others.
