The Beguiled trailer: First look at Sofia Coppola's Southern Gothic drama
The director's latest stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Thanks to early hits Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's firmly established herself as an event filmmaker - meaning it's a pretty big deal whenever a project of hers is about to hits screens.
This year's The Beguiled is certainly no different, offering a new take on a 1966 novel - and subsequent Clint Eastwood-starring film from 1971 - set in a women's boarding school in 1864 in Virginia at the height of the Civil War.
What's particularly exciting is the cast this film boasts: Nicole Kidman plays the headmistress of Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Kirsten Dunst plays teacher Edwina, and Elle Fanning plays student Alicia.
The inward-looking world of these young women is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of a wounded Union army soldier, played by Colin Farrell. Though the 1971 film focused on the soldier, Coppola will shift the narrative to the women and their relationships with each other and with the man who threatens to disrupt their harmony.
"The main crux of the story is about the dynamics between a group of women all stuck together, and then also the power shifts between men and women," Coppola told Entertainment Weekly, who have provided a first look at the film. "So for me, it’s very universal, but it’s in this exotic setting of the Southern gentility."
"I haven’t really done a genre film," she added. "It was fun to figure out how to approach that but still [keep the film] in my style, and to have this kind of beautiful, dreamy world that I like — but with a plot!"
The Beguiled hits UK cinemas 23 June.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments