LIFE

Gothic gloom in an oestrogenic Eden

Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/08/2017

» With morbid delight and cool lyricism, Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled tells the story of a Union soldier who finds shelter in an all-girl school during the American Civil War. The soldier, played by Colin Farrell, goes from scared to cocky to bewildered, a handsome lump of masculinity amid the virginal corsets of the good Catholic girls. The women -- Nicole Kidman as the headmistress, Kirsten Dunst as the French teacher, Elle Fanning as one of the students -- go from giggly to paranoid to practical, a chaste, confused, all-white colony of calm amid the smoking gunfire of war.