The Beguiled is a strange little movie, a creeping southern gothic melodrama about a Union soldier (Colin Farrell) taken in by an isolated Virginia girls’ school during the Civil War. The young ladies, most of whom haven’t seen a man in years, go wild with (restrained nineteenth century) passion when they see the soldier, an Irish mercenary who’s only fighting for the Yankees because he couldn’t find a regular job. It’s a brief and hazy story, which is a good thing; Kirsten Dunst’s Miss Edwina is the film’s trickiest mystery. The cinematography is frustrating, though. I saw it at the Avon, where it was so visually murky that you couldn’t see the actors’ faces for a good chunk of the time. (I’m not sure whether that was intentional.)
The Beguiled is playing daily at Cinemaworld Lincoln, Showcase Warwick, and the Avon Cinema.
