Sofia Coppola--The Beguiled (2017)

I expected great things of this film, since I had read about the response to it at Cannes and had read several positive reviews. I was disappointed and I was puzzled regarding the hoopla. 

I've not read the original novel, nor have I seen the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, so I had few preconceptions going into the theatre. I understand that Coppola's focus on the relations between the women and girls on the decaying estate housing a girls' school in Civil War Virginia is a unique approach to the story. The film fails to fulfill that promise, though, because the beautiful cinematography of Philippe Le Sourd disguises a very conventional film. 

What is revealed about the women and girls? That they all lose their minds when a wounded Union deserter is brought into their house to be nursed back to health. Unleash the repressed desires. Prepare the coquetry. Let loose the petty jealousy and competition among the women. Bring out the glad-rags. The film taps every possible stereotype about male-female relations. 

Corporal McBurney, the solder played by Colin Farrell, is actually a character of greater depth than any of the women. He masks his true thoughts; his duplicity is enacted for viewers. His apparent wily intelligence made me wonder who he really was and what he really wanted. Even as the film went on, I wondered about his motives. That is more than I will say about any of the female characters. All of those glances among them add up to precisely what you would expect. 

Each woman and girl is given a certain kind of individuality, but it's the individuality of labels (here's the one with the budding sexuality, here's the one who resents the attention given a Yankee, here's the one younger than the others whose fascination with him takes a more juvenile form). I had read in one review that Edwina, the character played by Kirsten Dunst, "wants something different." No she doesn't. It's the same thing that the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning want. They may want it in age- and social position-appropriate ways, but it comes down to the same thing. 

This story is an opportunity missed. I anticipated some injection of modernity into the proceedings, but from interviews given by Coppola it appears that this effort was lavished on costumes and hairstyles. Nothing unexpected happens here, though there was plenty of room to introduce greater complexity and some uniqueness into the portraits of these ladies. 

The film's best qualities are 

• The performances of Dunst and Farrell 
• The performance of Oona Laurence as young Amy who finds the soldier 
• The cinematography, especially of the natural world 
• The final scene, when the camera draws back from the porch to the gates 

In Birth of a Nation (1916), D.W. Griffith showed a very different picture of a Virginia family that outlasted the war. I could not help but think of young Flora Cameron decorating her worn dress with "Southern ermine" (cotton) when the women of The Beguiled dragged out their finery and jewels to beguile the young man in their midst. Those costumes are finally just window-dressing for a set of tired conventions.