Because I happen to know that she prefers the US spelling, “autarchically,” I believe this interview with Sofia Coppola is translated from the French:
SC/…I had been interested also by this period myself, the XVIIIth century in France, for quite a while, the atmosphere at Versailles, a place that functionned autarkically. I liked the idea of reconstituting that period, of doing a costume drama: to do that became then some sort of challenge for me.
JML/ Did you first try to do that film before shooting Lost in Translation?
SC/ I was working on MA’s screenplay much before LIT. In fact LIT was at first nothing but a distraction from MA, a means for me to get away from a project that I knew was going to be rather Pharaonic. After LIT I decided to concentrate myself entirely to MA, it then became a sort of obsession for me. I really put myself to work on the screenplay of MA on the very day that followed the end of LIT’s shooting.
“Title: In Marie-Antoinette’s Head” [ohnotheydidnt via greencine]