The Beguiled - Sofia Coppola (2017)

Remember earlier last year, right around Cannes time, when Sophia Coppola's "The Beguiled" was all anybody could talk about? We were all so sure the film would be renowned and celebrated come award season?

Surprisingly, Coppola's newest masterpiece, based on the novel by Thomas Cullinan, and the screenplay for the picture of the same name from 1971, has been overlooked, forgotten in just a few short months. 

Who knows why, but it's clearly a mistake most in the film community are making. They have a penchant for tunnel vision and short memories.

At any rate, we'll move on, knowing we're smarter than they are.

The plot of Coppola's latest offering looks, on its face, to be a pretty typical period romance. And it is. For the first hour, "Beguiled" paints us an emotional and typical love triangle. You can almost see the cover of the cheap romance novel with Colin Ferrell flashing his muscles under a white shirt that, for some reason, is torn open. 

Coppola starts the film out as a parable about showing simple kindness to all mankind, even one's enemies. 

A girl finds a wounded soldier Corporal John McBurney, (Colin Farrell), in the woods one day and brings him to a small school for girls. The girls are reticent about allowing a Yankee to recuperate in their proper southern school.

They reluctantly agree to let him stay with them because it's "the Christian thing to do." Soon, there's a spark, a small one at first, of romance between the Corporal and the school's Headmistress, Miss Martha, (Nicole Kidman in an chilling, muting, intense performance).

Then, Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) decides she'd like the Corporal for herself. 

Next, as we are just realizing another girl, Alicia, (Elle Fanning in turns a performance from pure into a vapid temptress), squeezes herself into the love triangle, Coppola takes a dark turn at the start of the third act. It's surreal watching the story unravel the true hostility that had been boiling under their skins all this time. 

The Corporal changes from a possible love interest to a villain on a dime. Coppola manages to make the change subtle and disruptive at the same time. Farrell gives the performance of the film as the third act makes the whole story the embodiment of what Southern Gothic really is.

Every character, each of the girls at the school, loses some innocence. The girls' virtue turns violent and that is the tragedy behind "The Beguiled." 

That is what  makes this film so dark.

That is what makes this film so lovely.