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| Cast of the film with director, Sofia Coppola |
Oscar winning writer, director and ultimate fashion icon Sofia Coppola returns to the period costume drama genre and reunites with her talented muses Kirsten Dunst ("Virgin Suicides" and "Marie Antoinette") and Elle Fanning ("Somewhere") for "The Beguiled," which also stars the supreme Nicole Kidman. The atmospheric thriller, which opens in select theaters on June 23, made waves at the Cannes Film Festival premiere and won Coppola the prize for best director, the second female ever to receive the honor.
Based Thomas Cullinan's novel of the same name (and a remake of the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood), the story begins in 1864 and centers around a Southern girl's boarding school overseen by a tightly wound Miss Martha (Kidman) and fragile spinster schoolteacher Edwina (Dunst). Almost marooned in this giant, and near desolate Virginia plantation house (it's mentioned at one point that Miss Martha sent the slaves away), the adults and students — snooty Jane (Angourie Rice), tomboy Amy (Oona Laurence), Emily (Emma Howard), adorable Marie (Addison Reicke) and Fanning's Alicia — remain, bored, listless and restless. One day, Amy stumbles upon wounded Union soldier John McBurney in the forest and brings him back to the mansion, thereby changing the already tense dynamic in the all-female household with a slow burn. Think: a Southern Gothic "The Bachelor" meets "Misery."
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