52 Films by Women Vol 2. 33. THE BEGUILED (Director: Sofia Coppola)
You wait years for a Coppola movie and two come out at once.
Paris Can Wait,
the travelogue, sorry road movie starring Diane Lane and Arnaud Viard and
written and directed by Eleanor Coppola will be the subject of a later entry in
this series. First we have The Beguiled,
written for the screen and directed by Sofia Coppola, Eleanor’s talented
daughter.
The Beguiled is
Coppola’s sixth feature film, after The
Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation,
Marie Antoinette, Somewhere and The
Bling Ring. You will have seen or heard of the second one, you know Bill
Murray goes to Japan to make a whiskey commercial and hangs out with Scarlett
Johansson, before she became Black Widow. This is typical Coppola – not big
drama. She has also done TV – Murray asked her to helm his Netflix special, A Very Murray Christmas. Great title,
but I remember Scrooged, man, a very
underwhelming Christmas comedy. She has also directed opera – La Traviata – in Milan, with costumes by
Valentino. Some people go to the opera for the costumes – look what she’s
wearing! Aside from Lost in Translation,
the daughter of Francis Coppola and cousin to Nicolas Cage and Jason
Schwartzman hasn’t directed what you would call a crossover hit. Until now –
maybe!
The Beguiled is
Coppola’s first remake. Thomas P Cullinan’s 1966 novel was the basis of a 1971
film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. If
Coppola is going to remake a Don Siegel picture, why not Charley Varrick? (I love that movie.) The Beguiled is about seven women crowing over one man in a
Southern boarding school in 1864. They are Confederates. He’s a Yankee. He’s
been shot in the leg. They do needlepoint and speak French. The Siegel version
overplayed female desire – one of the women was (physically) in love with her
brother. Eastwood’s Corporal McBurney even wanted to make it with an African
American helper. She told him the only way he would do so was if he got into
necrophilia. You can understand why Coppola would want to make a corrective
version, albeit one without any reference to slavery or necrophilia.
Up until now, I would classify Coppola as an urban director,
although Marie Antoinette had its
country gardens. The Beguiled is
different. It begins in the forest with a slow pan down to a young girl, Amy
(Oona Laurence) out looking for mushrooms. After some picky, picky, she
discovers Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) who is wounded in the leg, has
the Irish accent and everything. Farrell is great at faux gratitude. ‘If you
hadn’t found me, who knows what would have happened?’ Indeed – he might have joined
a boy band.
Incredibly, all on her own, young Amy manages to help
hobbling John back to her home, ‘Miss Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young
Ladies’, which is not to be confused with Tim Burton’s last film – though if
Eva Green had played Miss Martha – my, my. Here, women are occupied with the
dainty pursuits – basic French grammar and turtle herding (one of the girls
keeps a turtle). Miss Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) can barely keep her class focused;
they know she’s missing Spiderman.
John is tended to by Miss Martha herself (Nicole Kidman) who
gives him what is referred to as a bed bath, though when her cloth wanders
towards his covered crotch, it is almost bed bath and beyond. (I always
wondered about that store name.) After the bullets are prized out of his leg
and he is stitched up, John slowly recovers, engaging his visitors in
conversation.
Only one of the young womenfolk wants to hand him over to
the Confederate army – to do so would entail hanging a blue scarf on the front
gate. A red scarf might mean ‘no milk today’. But Miss Martha says ‘no’. She
implores her students to prayer. These are good Christian people.
McBurney exerts a fascination for the young women. They are
eager to impress him and he rewards them with compliments. The first half of
the movie threatens to show McBurney making a pass at one or more of them.
Indeed, he saves his most fulsome praise for Miss Amelia.
Up to this point, the scenes are brisk and without extra diegetic
music; that is, there is no musical score. We hear the cicadas as well as music
sung or performed by the young women – the film introduces Amy through her
singing which we hear before we see her. There is a plethora of establishing
shots. I lost count of the times we were shown five Ionic columns that
represent the exterior of Miss Martha’s home. At the halfway point, a score by
Phoenix intrudes. The music is based on Monteverdi’s ‘Magnificat’ - alas, I’m
not familiar with it. McBurney plays his hand and then suffers the same fate as
one of the characters in Ashgar Farhadi’s A
Separation.
The last part of the film is what gives the story its
infamy. I don’t want to say too much about it but Coppola downplays its
grisliness. She follows the plot very faithfully but doesn’t allow any one of
the women to fully emerge as a character.
Philippe Le Sourd’s cinematography is impressive. Some of
the shots of hanging trees and pools of water – a tradition signifier of female
sexuality – are beautiful. Coppola cannot offset the inherent campiness of the
story. Even she cannot stop the audience from laughing when Miss Martha cries,
‘bring me the anatomy book’.
In Coppola’s hands, the film is less about the battle of the
sexes and more about a single transgression having a snowball negative effect. The Beguiled isn’t a radical feminist
text and it is disappointing how little Coppola adds to the story – hers is an
illustration of the art of subtraction. The story offers its own pulpy pleasure
and I enjoyed Farrell’s mostly sympathetic performance. Though if you must see
one Farrell-Kidman film this year I’d recommend The Killing of a Sacred Deer, due out in November.
Reviewed at Crouch End
PictureHouse Screen Four, North London, Saturday 8 July 2017, 21:00 screening
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