“So I said in my Stardust reaction that I wished I could love Sofia Coppola. I realized that it wasn’t entirely true that I never liked her movies. I did really like Somewhere and kinda liked The Bling Ring. I was mostly thinking that I had a very similar reaction to this as The Virgin Suicides. In short, Coppola creates a beautiful world full of meaningful imagery, but her pacing is dreadfully slow.
Set in Virginia during the Civil War, an injured Yankee solider is taken in by the few women that remain at a girls boarding school. From how it’s being marketed, you’d assume that all hell breaks loose and that these are some crazy ladies and there’s weird circumstances and all these mind games going on. There’s maybe a little of that, but it takes a while to get there.
If we’d just cut right to the last half hour, I might have been raving about this. But that hour before was just so long and slow, although the cast was great.
There was one idea I found really interesting. This film was based on a book, that had been previously adapted for film starring Clint Eastwood in the 70’s. In his version, the soldier was the protagonist, but this version was told from the point of view of the women. As different events would occur, I’d try and picture them from the other side. I think there might have been a bit more terror on his end. Let’s be real though, I’m unlikely to track that movie down and check it out.
The Beguiled – \m/ \m/”