Don't be 'Beguiled' by trailers; film's not Shyamalan
Let's start with those theatrical trailers that reveal every narrative complication and surprise in Sofia Coppola's moody remake of “The Beguiled.”
Shuffling the chronology of scenes doesn't fool anyone. People aren't stupid. Near the end, they can guess what's coming up based on what they saw in the trailers that hasn't happened on the screen yet.
This hardly serves moviegoers who haven't seen, or don't remember, Don Siegel's original 1971 drama starring Clint Eastwood.
Furthermore, the trailers and commercials suggest Coppola's film is a macabre, Civil-War-era M. Night Shyamalan horror tale with shocks and plot twists galore.
No. It's a carefully measured, gothic tapestry bathed in soft, heavenly light with the raging emotions of Southern belles held in tight check by their psychological and cultural corsets.
The story of “The Beguiled” doesn't explode on the silver screen. It unfolds. Slowly.
A young girl named Amy (Oona Laurence) discovers a wounded Union army corporal named John McBurney (Colin Farrell) while picking mushrooms. Being a Christian-minded girl, she brings him back to a grand old mansion now serving as a refuge where several proper Southern ladies wait out the Civil War while dressed in white, studying French and practicing their oh-so-genteel demeanor.
That changes when the handsome corporal comes into their gated cage where men have not been for a long time.
Cue the heavy breathing and slightly heaving bosoms as the women nurse McBurney back to health.
Martha (Nicole Kidman) has taken charge of the household, and elects herself to provide a sponge bath for the still-unconscious soldier.
Teenage Alicia (Elle Fanning) is practically twitterpated over the new arrival, and, after he awakens, sneaks kisses on him when she can get away with it.
Meanwhile, older Edwina (Kristin Dunst) may be intrigued by the carnal possibilities of their guest, but fantasizes mostly about McBurney romantically whisking her away from the doldrums of her structured, soul-diminishing existence.
McBurney easily sees what effect he has on these and the other women in the mansion, and merrily sets out to exploit them, gradually setting the once-unified belles into competitors, each vying for the stranger's attentions and plentiful, hollow flatteries.
“The Beguiled” is a gothic drama, to be sure, for there will be penance to pay for deceit.
Coppola, who wrote the screenplay based on Thomas P. Cullinan's novel “The Painted Devil,” ignites a long, long dramatic fuse on this art house project, sumptuously rendered by director of cinematography Philippe Le Sourd in ethereal natural light, be it from a woozy, filtered sun or a soft, glowing candle.
Of the women, Dunst supplies the most textured, layered performance as the quietly desperate Edwina opposite Farrell's blunter, less complicated, would-be Lothario.
“The enemy is not what we believe,” Martha wisely warns her fellow belles during their daily prayers.
And “The Beguiled” is not what those trailers want us to believe.
“The Beguiled”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, Oona Laurence
Directed by: Sofia Coppola
Other: A Focus Features release. Rated R for sexual situations. 94 minutes