The Beguiled (**)

THE BEGUILED is the work of an assured filmmaker with nowhere to go, no story to tell. It's a beautiful vision of a world that isn't something that needed to be told. Clint Eastwood starred in a different film adaptation of the same material in 1971. After watching Coppola's latest work, I have to ask whether there was anything else that needed to be explored?

Sofia Coppola is one of the premiere filmmakers of her time. The Oscar-winner who is known for her charming and ethereal style, her work has been both praised (Lost In Translation), debated (Marie Antionette), and lost as the years go on (The Bling Ring). We can identify her films through many factors: a quiet bubblegum soundtrack, strong female leads, a lack of dialogue for long stretches... The Beguiled seemed like a perfect project for this filmmaker to add to an already challenging resume. The story of a wounded Civil War Corporal (Colin Farrell) who is found in the forest and brought to a small all-girls boarding school to recover. The school, led by a tenacious Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) and with the assistance of a shy teacher named Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), keeps secure the Northern soldier in the music room. He is considered both a danger and an object of intense curiosity, especially at the hands of the younger students.

We explore a world in which the Civil War is being fought just off screen. Artillery shells create a constant echo of battle through the woods, and yet we never face the gunfire at hand. In fact the entire movie plays out in the claustrophobic scenery of the antebellum overgrowth and the small school set there in the wilderness. The Colonel asks Edwina if she has a man fighting off in battle, to which she sadly replies "no." These 7 women live a life that carries on despite war. They are not held up by it.

As stated, Sofia Coppola knows how to create a mood in her stories. The camerawork here is second to none, naturally-lit and beaming with sunlight and green plants and shadowy rooms. Likewise for the performances: subtle, assured, not a weak link in the bunch. Why does the end result feel so vapid? The story is slow, trudging along until the characters hit a breaking point in which sexual desire seems to take hold. It's a development that unfolds in all of the last 30 minutes of the movie, detaching the audience from such a hypnotic tale and nosediving into something more cliched. I don't feel the need to explain the plot details but know that the film ends in a bout of carnage, violence, and revenge. The final act of vengeance by Miss Martha and her girls feels so out of place, as does the change of character for the Corporal and his brandishing of a gun in one particularly flat moment.

I didn't care for these people once the movie was over, nor did I feel compelled to worry for these characters as they began to make rash decisions. If I could mute the movie I would, bathe in the subtle and effective filmmaking from a purely technical aspect. Beyond that, there's not a whole much to appreciate.