Directed by:
Sofia CoppolaCinematography:
Philippe Le SourdCast:
Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard, Wayne PéreVOD (1)
Plots(1)
Sofia Coppola's adaptation of this Southern Gothic tale of sexual rivalries stars Colin Farrell as a wounded Union soldier who triggers dangerous desires when he's taken in by the headmistress of an all-girls boarding school. (Home Box Office)
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Reviews (12)
The blue-coated fox in the Southern hen house. The residents are in an uproar and have established a waiting list for him, and it’s only a matter of time before the old lady is fed up. Outside, a lazy mist naturally flows around the Spanish moss, while inside, naturally lit diminishing restraint and everywhere, natural beings writhing with desire. Up to this point, Coppola still manages to hold the triumphs of atmosphere, but from the moment the polite soldier and model for an ice-cream ad turns into an aggressive maniac with a flick of a magical saw, it becomes something that even Colin Farrell can't salvage
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Sofia Coppola has always relied on emotion rather than historical epic, and this personal story of a woman's motivations and feelings is no different. The running time, the story, and the protagonists, dominated primarily by Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, are in line with this. Colin Farrell's character has it all together in the middle of the film and then starts making incomprehensible and illogical (screenwriting) mistakes, which, given the leisurely build-up of the story, feels like a punch in the gut. Otherwise, the cinematography is great, as it should be in a historical drama, but one can't help feeling that some of the main characters' interactions feel like Coppola made this film with a nineteenth-century style.
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An hour-long wait for a peak that definitely isn't worth an hour-long wait. Lots of stolen glances, genuine curiosity, and suppressed emotions do all the heavy lifting for plot development that struck me as belonging in a different, significantly less successful film. The answers to the questions that interested me the most remained hidden behind silent female characters. Sofia Coppola is definitely losing her uniqueness.
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For a ninety-minute feature, The Beguiled doesn’t have much of a plot. Kirstens' Dunst’s well-played Victorian restraint and innocence (read: sexual desire ready to be awakened) and another great performance by Nicole Kidman as the head of the household are the only things that interested me here. Many scenes had half the screening room (including me) in stitches. Sofia Coppola forgot that the contemporary viewer is not one of the protagonists of her film and its time. If a remake for a contemporary audience really was necessary, it should have been made by Guillermo del Toro. With a healthy dose of ketchup. [Cannes]
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The Beguiled is a gentler, more sensual and more sophisticated take on Thomas Cullin’s novel than the film made by Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood in 1971. In the original film, the ruin of men was represented by jealous and vengeful women who were incapable of suppressing their lust. Therefore, I understand Sofia Coppola’s decision to rework the same subject matter so that the result would not be a film expressing male paranoia about female hysteria and in which Southern belles are defined solely by their sexuality (or lack thereof). Coppola dispensed with the broader historical context and replaced it with a timeless narrative about the battle of the sexes and girls coming of age. Similarly as in The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette, she confines her female protagonists to a golden cage, which provides them with certain privileges but also prevents them from freely expressing their individual interests. This confinement is manifested also in The Beguiled in the disregard for the outside world, corresponding to the point of view of privileged white girls who are only interested in their own needs. Despite its seeming one-dimensionality and superficiality, The Beguiled is a layered, subversive and humorous film with an ambiguous message. 85%
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