In 1966 the writer Thomas P. Cullinan published the novel originally titled A Painted Devil, from which later the director Don Siegel was based to film The Beguiled, starring Clint Eastwood, and released in the year 1971. 46 years later, in 2017, Sofia Coppola, daughter of the director Francis Ford Coppola, decided to show her vision of the same story by making an adoption titled in the same way, The Beguiled. Today I will talk about it.
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Year: 2017
Category: Drama.
Director: Sofia Coppola.
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, Oona Laurence, Emma Howard, Addison Riecke.
Plot
During the Civil War, in Virginia, a group of women belonging to a girls school decided to give refuge and help a soldier of the Union Army for moral reasons, however, the feelings of some of them complicate the already difficult situation.
Opinion
The film is set in Virginia, during the year 1864, in the middle of the Civil War and tells us how Amy, a pupil of a girls school, is in the forest collecting mushrooms when suddenly she runs into John Mcburney, a corporal in the Union Army, who is in very bad condition because his leg is injured, so she decides to take him to the school, where the only ones present are Martha Farnsworth, who runs the place, a single teacher, Edwina Morrow, and four other pupils, Alicia, Jane, Emily and Marie. There, all of them decide to make the decision to save John's life, because although they see in him a possible threat, since he belongs to the opposing side of the war, they also consider that his Christian duty is not to let him die.
The arrival of John at school generates a change in the attitude of each of the women, including the youngest ones. They all want to get John's attention to themselves, provoking among the three main women a struggle of subtle hints that are becoming more evident, one of them is Mrs. Farnsworth, who has an advantage in directing the place and being able to give orders to all, on the other hand, there is the teacher Edwina responsible for supervising the girls, and finally, Alicia, the oldest of the young pupils. John will try to take advantage of the situation to win the sympathy of all of them and thus try to stay sheltered in school while the war ends, however, a decision made by him causes a turn of events.
The film is quite slow, something that can be intuited from the first moment, and that is sentenced in the long final shot. The film has a duration of only an hour and a half, however, it is perceived much longer, because the conflict of the film is made to wait until the last 30 or 25 minutes, where later everything becomes more hurried and the rhythm of the events change precipitously.
The images that we see on the screen are well taken care of, in that aspect there is little to claim, and the lighting is carried out naturally, the costumes are also very well done, so if you have to find a problem in the movie, in none of these aspects will we find it.
If there is a problem to be found, I would see it mainly in the performances, I cannot clearly define the reason for my disagreement, but I am not satisfied with the performances of the main characters, perhaps with the exception of Elle Fanning, who also does not stand out, but which makes it better, according to my perception, than experts like Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, who for some reason have not convinced me at all, especially, Dunst, whose character seems completely incongruous to me and who does not I could understand.
Another flaw, as I said, I find it in the direction, delay the turn of the plot to the end, making the viewer see nothing new for an hour, but repeating the same thing over and over again. However, and despite its shortcomings, something that I liked about the movie is that the story unfolds quite realistically.
