One of the things that I like about director Sofia Coppola is that she doesn't seem in any rush to get out movies just to get out movies, its like she only makes a movie when she has a movie she wants to make. Her most recent feature, and first in four years, is The Beguiled, the story of a girls finishing school in 1864 Virginia, whose few remaining students and faculty take in a injured Union solder (Colin Farrell) and try to nurse him back to health after he is partially crippled by shrapnel. The solder, Corporal John McBurney, quickly finds himself the lone object of desire for a half dozen frightened, isolated women, he attempts to play this to his advantage, but eventually makes a foolish mistake that sends his entire house of cards crashing down on him.
The film is based on a 1966 novel of the same name by Thomas P. Cullinan, and I didn't know until after I'd seen this most recent version that this had been made into a film before, in 1971 starting Clint Eastwood. Coppola's version has an impressive cast of women, featuring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning, with the lesser known younger cast members also being fairly impressive. This is a mood piece, like the gothic southern mansion in which it is primarily set, it's a humid, slowly creaking piece, and in no rush. Also like the beautiful antebellum southern house the movies leaves us feeling morally torn, there is great esthetic beauty to it, but an underlining barbarism. ***
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