DVD Review: The Beguiled is Ethereal but Empty

The Beguiled is Ethereal but Empty 

Sofia Coppola’s latest film The Beguiled is a beauty to behold, from the sprawling antebellum era white manse to the the tendrils of fog drifting in and around the lush, and earthy embrace of the property in rural Virginia. Visually, The Beguiled is a gilt mirror frame-- all polish, shine and elegance-- but lacks the sheet of glass in the middle. It’s a beauty at first glance, but it’s really nothing but emptiness. An emptiness that lingers for the duration of the film, as omnipresent as the gunfire softly thundering on in the distance.

It’s 1864 and the Civil War is nearing its end. The Beguiled opens like a fairytale-- dusk falls as a little girl named Amy, humming folk tunes to herself skips off to the wood ready to collect mushrooms for dinner. She’s not cornered by a hungry wolf, but instead stumbles upon a man in Union soldier garb, slumped against a tree, nearly unconscious. Amy’s  (Oona Laurence) nurturing nature gets the best of her, and she manages to get the injured man, who introduces himself as Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) back the small distance to the girl’s school she’s residing in. Little does she know, her kind gesture has disastrous results for the rest of the girls and teachers.

Miss Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies is a school with enrollment dwindling. Lessons aren’t the primary focus anymore, now that less than a dozen girls are still lodging there. Instead the home is more of a safe haven for those final girls weathering out the Civil War, with nowhere else to go. The tall wrought iron gates shut the women in from the chaos of war crashing down around them. It protects them, but also leaves them isolated. Three of the school girls-- Jane, Marie and Amy are devoted to their French, history and music lessons and their day to day chores. But the eldest amongst them, Alicia (Elle Fanning)  a girl of seventeen is restless. The refuge is more like a cage for her, and her budding sexuality is continually tramped down by her teacher Miss Edwina Morrow (Kirsten Dunst) and headmistress Miss Farnsworth. John’s sudden arrival is the wind that fans her flames of desire back up to fever pitch.

But the passion is still muted by long, drawn out scenes. Gauzy gray and white filters playing over the girls reciting French, hoeing the garden, and standing on the porch with a telescope pressed to their eye, scanning the horizon for troops and danger, are dreamy at first, but soon become dull. The Corporal is laid up in bed, where he’s tended to by Edwina who dabs at his brow with cloths, and clings to each of his words with a kind of childlike desperation and fascination-- or visited by Alicia who sneaks kisses while he’s “sleeping” and the other girls are at prayer. Rounding out his trio of caretakers is Farnsworth who relishes the chance to talk to another adult, one of the gentleman persuasion. The storytelling and cinematography though, is static and stagnant. The Beguiled is a bland record of a day-to-day chores, schooling, and evening candle-lit prayers and conversations with John. Conversations that never go much beyond shooting the breeze. There is a tension stringing up between the three core women-- Alicia, Edwina Morrow and Miss Farnsworth -- but it’s not nearly potent enough to keep us engaged or breathless. There’s intrigue yes, gothic romantic vibes, and pretty visuals, but the characters are as flat as paper dolls, with personalities to match.

John’s cowardice and his fears about returning to the gory and violent battlefields are met with not just pity by the women, but fascination. What starts off as Amy’s rescue and Miss Farnsworth’s “Christian” gesture to make sure the Corporal’s wounded leg is healed before they turn him over to the Confederate troops that pass through, ends up becoming a kind of obsession. Keeping John behind locked doors the girls -- and women-- ogle at him in turns. Some, like Jane and Marie with the kind of interest that comes from looking at a butterfly trapped under a jar. Others like Amy, a sociable and cheerful girl, who’s out to make a new friend beyond just her turtles and birds. And Alicia, who’s urges are getting harder to ignore with every moment the Corporal is in the home-- just doors away. In theory this female-led historical drama ought to be a fascinating look at what happens when the unruly outside breaches the quietly contained inside sphere of the women’s world…. But it’s anything but.

In the closing twenty minutes, The Beguiled takes a turn from dreary and dull to disturbing. But the sudden shift and jump in pace isn’t enough to redeem the film as a whole. The narrative is sluggish, the characters underdeveloped and uninteresting and the plot accomplishes the barest minimum. All that glitters isn’t gold. And even when The Beguiled does sparkle and shine with set design and cinematography, it’s still empty-- a gold frame with not a mirror in sight.