The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola’s take on Thomas Collinan’s novel The Beguiled slowly but effortlessly glides from wishful thinking to the stuff of nightmares. While she’s following in the intimidating footsteps of Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry) and Clint Eastwood in peak form, her own sensibilities serve the story well.

Whereas Siegel created his chills by spelling out how awful people can be in close quarters, Coppola waits to reveal the latent horrors in a Civil War-era Virginia girls school that has fallen on hard times.

While the two-story home is stately and located on picturesque grounds, any of the students who have somewhere else to go have

left because it’s close to the fighting. Even the slave once assigned to the institution has gone.

Coppola loads the film with achingly lovely shots of the scenery. Cannons roar in the distance, while pupils go about their studies as if nothing is amiss.

That attitude changes when 12-year-old Amy (Oona Laurence) discovers the wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell) in the woods as she picks mushrooms. With a lower leg full of lead, McBurney is in no condition to escape, but the logical decision would be to turn him over to the Confederate patrols that watch over the area.

But as she watches the corporal bleeding on the steps of the school, Amy informs the proprietor Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) that it wouldn’t be Christian to turn him over to the Rebels in his weakened state, even if he is a bluebelly.

Actually, there may be something else going on. McBurney is polite and deferential to his hostesses. As his leg heals, he even helps restore the yard to its former glory.

Oh, and Miss Martha, teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), precocious teen Alicia (Elle Fanning) and the other young ladies find McBurney rather hunky for a Yankee.

Because neither he nor the women around him have been near the opposite sex in what seems like an eternity, neither seems eager to turn down advances. Then again, the school’s full-time residents aren’t eager to share him.

At the beginning of his 1971 movie, Siegel made no mystery about the kind of guy McBurney was. (Having your leading man hit on a 12-year-old in a film’s opening minutes is a tip-off that he’s trouble.)

Eastwood’s Sphinx-like manner came in handy because it almost made viewers wonder if McBurney might have a thought in his head that wasn’t about self-aggrandizement and preservation. Farrell’s courteousness is intriguing because his McBurney could simply be a fellow on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line. He’s Irish, not a native Yankee. So, he may not be the menace the ladies have been led to believe.

Coppola prunes most of the backstory away. As a result, viewers gradually determine for themselves what’s really going on in the characters’ heads. This makes the eventual jolts more alarming.

After lulling viewers with the elegant moss-covered mansion and deceptively gentle lighting (from Philippe Le Sourd, who shot Wong KarWai’s The Grandmaster), Coppola pounces, revealing that some of the worst wartime behavior occurs far from the actual battlefield. McBurney and his captors/hosts can be driven to fantastically craven behavior.

Coppola’s subtlety and Siegel’s gothic approach both work. The Beguiled was Siegel’s personal favorite of his movies, and Coppola won Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. No matter how you tell a story involving claustrophobia and jealousy, the results can still be engrossingly unnerving.

Wounded Union soldier Cpl. John McBurney (Colin Farrell) draws the attentions of girls school teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film.

Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) is initially unimpressed with the charms of a wounded Union soldier she takes into her girls school in Sofia Coppola’s remake of Don Siegel’s The Beguiled.