The Beguiled
With her two first films, Sofia Coppola gained a cult status of an author on femininity and loneliness. Both The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation were serious and deep studies of female characters in subtle but strong claims for a personal identity, while Sofia developed soft velvety visual textures to portray this unique worlds. Marie Antoinette was another triumph in her aesthetic development, but her storytelling started failing, and her two subsequent films were something totally naïve, superfluous and forgettable.
In The Beguiled we see Mrs. Coppola back in form, taking a step backwards to examine what set her apart as an artist and leaving the pop maximalism that was what she rescued from Lost in Translation for her following films, but already proved to be the equivocal part of her success. Instead, now she tackles the dark parts of repressed womanhood in a thriller-esque drama on a wounded male soldier taken by an all-female boarding school in the middle of the Civil War.
Even if this film holds enough similarities with her opera prima to be called The Virgin Southerns, The Beguiled has new merits for the filmmaker: the perfect drawing of a period piece (don't trying to make it a fantasy videoclip like in Marie Antoinette), the dark humor, and the personal approach to noir aesthetics are something that we hadn't see in her before. But if she is more than correct in her storytelling and the films flows with perfect pulse during the entire 90 minutes, you probably can blame her in lacking forcefulness in her message, if there's any, because when the film finishes, you will remember very well the visuals, but the ideas won't be haunting you as they did in Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation.
It is the cinematography the best part of the film: the soft textures in desaturated pastel colors, the slow camera movements, the use of flairs and light diffusions... it screams that is a Sofia Coppola film. Even her casting is an consequent choice with her visuals: the blond hair and pale skin in her three female main characters is able to capture qualities of light and color that are unique to her style and that justify the lack of diversity in her casting.
But this traditional beauties also carry the message of glorified whiteness and the character flaws that it can hide. They are immaculate princesses that are preserved from the horrors of war, but this idea of perfection doesn't correlate with their hidden desires and personalities, and it only takes a little disruption to corrupt them. Nicole Kidman is superb in her role of headmistress, and her latest selection of roles is telling us that she is ready to fight back for the title of "Best Actor in her generation" that she indisputably held at the beginning of the 00's.
We really can't argue with the award of Best Director that Coppola received at Cannes this year (the second woman in history to receive this prize), because every single element of the film aligns with her search of a particular tone and aesthetic. It's a perversely delicious film charged with sensuality and darkness, but made with entire maturity and elegance.
