The Beguiled (2017)

When I accepted the Meetup invitation to see this, I didn't know that it was a remake -- or rather, as the director insisted, a second cinematic adaptation of a book. Some of the older group members had seen the Clint Eastwood version and found it haunting, so there was a bit to live up to. For my part, I wanted to see a promising Sofia Coppola film for the first time since Lost in Translation.

Cpl. John McBurnie (Colin Farrell), a Union deserter with a fresh leg wound, finds reluctant hospitality at a Confederate girl school with headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman), teacher Edwina Murrow (Kirsten Dunst), and five students (of whom Elle Fanning plays the probable eldest). Despite his official enemy status, he garners the affectionate interest of eventually all seven ladies. Martha figures on sending him away upon recovery, but when he gets well enough to tend the neglected garden, it becomes more tempting to let him stay. Alas, his intentions are not all innocent, let alone harmless in effect to others or himself.
This is one of those stories that manages to feel both gradual and rapid. In particular, emotions move quickly, but the particulars of the plot take a while. If I wanted to do a complete synopsis, it wouldn't make too long a paragraph.

From what people said about the 1971 movie, I had expected something more disturbing than the occasional brief leg gore. While the female characters rarely have their minds on anything besides John (thus barely passing the Bechdel test), their jealousy never gets them to act truly mean to each other. Indeed, unlike in the original, most of them never come close to sex with him. I'm not surprised; most directors other than Quentin Tarantino, perhaps especially women, are not nostalgic for sleazy aspects of '70s thrillers.

Of course, there are tradeoffs in reduction from excess. It rarely feels much like a thriller. The reactions I detected most in the theater were chuckles at the southern belles' poorly concealed lust. At times, especially the ending, I got the impression that the writer had intended to do something more and then had second thoughts.

To me, what works best about the flick is a certain authenticity. The actors took various lessons for living like it's 1864. Moreover, as ugly a turn as the story takes, I found all the characters understandably human. None are too wicked for me to relate, which seems a common weakness of the genre.

Nevertheless, this realism has its limits. Those more familiar with the South notice that the environment (shot in Louisiana) could hardly pass for Virginia. They doubt that the two women and five teens would have what it took to get three years into the Civil War without worse travails from soldiers. Kidman affects a hard demeanor, but neither she nor the others show much brawn from having to fend for themselves.

Speaking of which, you may have heard complaints about the removal of a muscular Black character. This isn't "whitewashing" for its own sake; in a way, it attempts to avert racism. Coppola assures us that she takes slavery too seriously to give it the short shrift that the plot would otherwise require.

I still think Coppola has yet to earn her assigned places that I've seen on a few lists of best directors, whose compilers may have been desperate to include a woman (back before Kathryn Bigelow hit it big). But she brings enough that I plan to see more of her work someday. TB is neither great nor dull to me, so I don't mind having bought the ticket and chatted with the group about it.