Fox in the Hen House

Movies: The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola is a film auteur whose work I *want* to like more than I actually do. I've seen almost all of her films (with the exception of 2010's Somewhere) and my general emotion towards the lot of them is "s'ok".

Imagine you went on a date with a beautiful person whose dating profile sounded very intriguing...and on that date, you realize this beautiful person across the table from you has very little to say and few interesting opinions. That's what the experience of watching a Sofia Coppola film. All beauty, and maybe *some* substance, but not enough for a second date/rewatch.

Coppola's latest film, The Beguiled, which is actually a remake of a 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood and based on the 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan, is ripe to be a sexy, violent, Southern Gothic story. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to its overheated plot description: during the American Civil War, a wounded Union soldier is discovered outside of a girl's school in backwoods Virginia. The ladies of the academy decide it is their Christian duty to tend to his wounds before turning him over to their boys on the Confederate side. He's the only man they've seen in years and an attractive one at that (with an Irish accent!!!!). What could possibly go wrong?

Nicole Kidman, beautifully cast as a gentle Southern lady, is Miss Farnsworth, the Headmistress of the girl's school that bears her name. Kirsten Dunst (a Coppola regular) is Edwina, a prim schoolteacher who is ripe for marriage with no men in sight to make her an offer. Elle Fanning plays Alicia, a sly teenage student who becomes quite curious at the helpless visitor who takes up temporary residence at the school after being discovered by one of the younger girls in the woods. And Colin Farrell who is so insanely hot it should be illegal, plays that visitor: Cpl. John McBurney, previously from Dublin and now fighting (possibly as a mercenary) for the North.

The Beguiled has a pretty thin plot: wounded hot guy makes the broads go crazy. That's about it. John is not above manipulating the women who surround him: he pitches woo at Edwina with no intention of making an honest woman of her, he flirts with Miss Farnsworth herself, and he even tells Amy, the young girl who discovered him in the woods, "I consider you my best friend here." Whether he does this as a means of survival (every day he stays at the academy is another day the Confederates don't know about his existence) or out of a sense of sick fun, or out of pure lust is never entirely clear, but it's likely a mixture of all three motives.

All of this leads to a climax that I found more underwhelming than shocking. Just as with Coppola's films The Bling Ring and Marie Antoinette, I left the theatre thinking "Well. That was a movie." (to be fair, her films Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides are a little more substantial).

Additionally, there's the issue of there being no black people...in a movie that takes place in the South during the Civil War. Early in the film, when Amy is helping John back to the school she says "the slaves left." Oh, excuse me, the slaves left? Geez, why didn't anyone tell all the slaves in the South that they could just fucking "leave" if they wanted to?? It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble!

So, the problem is not just the fact that there are no black characters in the film (incidentally, the 1971 version does have a character named Hallie who is a slave), but that the entire point of the War which is the background for the film (a film about imbalances of power) is washed away with a line that doesn't make any sense. Seriously, if Amy had said "we sold the slaves to get extra money for food", it would have made more sense. And the saddest thing about the white-washing of The Beguiled is that Coppola had a great opportunity to add an extra layer to a film which, as I mention above, is primarily about power: who has it and how they wield it. In a film where southern women, normally seen as not much more than pretty objects who can sew, suddenly have the upper hand over a man, wouldn't it be interesting to have a black woman in the mix and explore how her power changes given the situation? I think so, but clearly Coppola did not.

Normally, I'd give The Beguiled a B for its beauty and the undeniably solid acting chops of all involved, but for the lazy way slavery is dismissed and for not living up to my standards of what a movie like this could be and should be, it gets a...

Grade: B-