The Beguiled (2017 film)

Martha Farnsworth runs a girls school in Virginia during the Civil War. By 1864, almost all of the students, teachers, and enslaved persons have left. In addition to Farnsworth herself, only five students and one teacher, Edwina Morrow, remain. While out in the woods searching for mushrooms, Amy, a pupil, comes across John McBurney, a corporal in the Union Army who was wounded in the leg during battle, and has since deserted. Amy brings McBurney to the school where he falls unconscious. The women lock McBurney in one of the rooms while Miss Farnsworth tends to his wounds. All the women and girls in the school are immediately fascinated by the handsome man.

Initially, some of the school's residents want McBurney to be delivered as a prisoner of war to the Confederate Army, but Miss Farnsworth decides that they will let his leg heal before they decide what they will do with him. When Confederate soldiers arrive at the school, Miss Farnsworth does not tell them that a Union soldier is on the premises. While McBurney is recovering, the women and girls subtly vie for his affection by giving him presents, wearing jewelry, and preparing a lavish dinner for him. He returns the affection, concentrating especially on Miss Morrow and Miss Farnsworth. When he is able to move again, he begins to help in the garden. It becomes clear that he fears returning to battle.

When Miss Farnsworth indicates that McBurney is healthy enough and will have to leave the school in a few days, he tries to convince her to let him stay as a gardener, and tells Miss Morrow that he has fallen in love with her. One night, he tells Miss Morrow to await him in her room. When he does not appear and she hears strange noises, she investigates and finds him in bed with Alicia, a teenage pupil. McBurney tries to calm the angry Miss Morrow down, but she pushes him away, causing him to fall down the stairs and badly break his already injured leg. Miss Farnsworth decides that the only way to save his life is to amputate the leg.

When he awakes the next day and realizes he has lost his leg, McBurney is devastated and furious, accusing the women (and especially Miss Farnsworth) of having punished him for choosing Alicia's room instead of theirs. He is locked up in his room but threatens Alicia, who gets him the room key. He then breaks out, steals a gun, and loudly threatens the women before storming off. Miss Morrow follows him to his room, where she initiates a sexual encounter.

Meanwhile Miss Farnsworth tries to find a solution. One of the students suggests killing McBurney by preparing him a dinner of poisonous mushrooms, to which Miss Farnsworth agrees. During the dinner, Miss Morrow, unaware of the plan, is deterred by the others at the last minute from putting the mushrooms on her own plate, but McBurney's suspicions are not aroused. Promptly after eating the mushrooms, he falls to the floor in the throes of death. While the others are sewing McBurney's body into a shroud, Miss Morrow looks on, devastated. The film ends with the women dragging McBurney's body to the road so that he will be found by the next Confederate soldiers who pass by.

Coppola had initially expressed an aversion to a remake, but after watching the 1971 version at the urging of production designer Anne Rose, she was left contemplating ways she could update the film.[8] Specifically, she became interested in showing the story from the women's point of view, as opposed to the man's.[9] The material came to Coppola at a time when she wanted to make a more optimistic film than 2013's The Bling Ring, stating that she wanted to "cleanse myself" from what she terms was "such a tacky, ugly world".[8]

The Madewood Plantation House.

In March 2016, it was announced that Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Kirsten Dunst were in talks to appear in the film,[10] and had been signed by July, when Colin Farrell entered talks.[11] Based on a Magnificat from Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, the music for the film was composed by the rock band Phoenix (whose lead singer, Thomas Mars, is married to Coppola).[12] Two popular Civil War ballads, "Lorena" and "Aura Lea", were used in the film, in addition to Stephen Foster's "Virginia Belle".[13] Most of the costumes in the film were designed by Stacey Battat, who used the costume and fabric archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to gain inspiration for contemporary fashion.[14] Corsets were made for each actress, while for historical accuracy only cotton fabric was used, which was in turn either stone washed or enzyme washed to weather the fabrics and make them look worn in.[14]

Principal photography began on October 31, 2016 and concluded on December 7, 2016.[15][16] Exterior scenes were shot on the grounds of the Madewood Plantation House, near Napoleonville, Louisiana.[17] Interiors were filmed in actress Jennifer Coolidge's house in New Orleans.[18]

The film had its world premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival;[4] Coppola won the Best Director Award,[19] making her the second woman to ever win in that category, 56 years after the first female director won.[20][1] The film began a limited release on June 23, 2017, before expanding to a wide release on June 30, 2017.[21]

The 1966 novel had an enslaved black woman as a supporting character, whom director Sofia Coppola removed from the film, and for a biracial character from the novel, she cast Caucasian actress Kirsten Dunst. The Guardian said Coppola was criticized for engaging in whitewashing, to which the director said she made the changes so as "not [to] brush over such an important topic in a light way," and that "[y]oung girls watch my films and this was not the depiction of an African American character I would want to show them."[28]

• Official website
• The Beguiled on IMDb
• The Beguiled at Box Office Mojo
• The Beguiled at Metacritic
• The Beguiled at Rotten Tomatoes