The American South during the civil war. Martha runs an all-girls school with five students and a teacher, Edwina, in a mansion in the rural area. One day they find a wounded Union soldier, John, and bring him in to nurture him back to health in a room. John wants to avoid going back to war, and thus tries to charm Martha, and even says that he loves Edwina. However, when Edwina finds a student, Alicia, in bed with him, she attacks John, and he falls down the stairs, injuring himself. Martha decides to amputate John's leg, allegedly because it is very wounded. When John wakes up, he is angry and threatens the girls with a pistol. Martha serves him dinner with poisonous mushrooms, so John dies, and they throw him out.
Sofia Coppola's 8th film is a lyrical meditation on both the mistrust between the male-female relationships, as well as the strained relations between the American South and North, one representing conservatism, the other a more liberal mentality. Unfortunately, the dreamy mood deteriorated into its opposite, a boring set of scenes which just cause the viewers to become sleepy. For a whole first hour, nothing happens. There is no palpable sexual tension between John (Colin Farrell) and Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), nor between any other of the all-female students, save for formal scenes where they act the way they act, but without much causality. Sadly, the dialogues are also bland and routine, unmemorable, as well as the thin storyline, and thus all the seven women are underused characters who do not get much to work with or to demonstrate their acting range. The tangle in which Martha (Nicole Kidman) amputates John's leg livens the scenery up a bit, creating a certain dramatic tension and unexpected turns, yet even this can only go so far. An interesting idea was to film a lot of night scenes in natural light, barely lit by candles, to give it a more authentic feel. Overall, though, despite a bitter-dark ending, it is not clear what point "The Beguiled" wants to say or how it intends to captivate its audience along the way.
Grade:+
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