<em>The Beguiled</em> Is a Steamy but Restrained Thriller
Sofia Coppola’s new film deploys stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell perfectly in a Civil War-era battle of wits.
The world of Sofia Coppola’s , as with so many of her films, is gorgeous but stifling. Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies, a boarding school in rural Mississippi, is a manse with expansive grounds, but it feels hermetically sealed. Though closed off from the encroaching chaos of the Civil War, the institution is decaying as a result of most of its students fleeing. Coppola’s film is the second adaptation of a novel by Thomas P. Cullinan about what happens when the school takes in
