Sofia Coppola Goes Gothic Romance in The Beguiled Trailer

Sofia Coppola’s latest seems both in her wheelhouse and unlike anything she’s done before. Feast your eyes on the first trailer and images for The Beguiled.

How we have missed you, Sofia Coppola. The director’s last theatrical release, the Los Angeles heist satire The Bling Ring, came out way back in 2013. Since then, all we’ve gotten from her is a Netflix Christmas special and four commercials for Gap. Frankly, this is unacceptable.

But salvation is nigh. In early 2016, The Tracking Board revealed that Coppola’s next project would be The Beguiled, a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie (itself an adaptation of a 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan). Production began in October, and now, we have our first peek at the final product.

Yesterday, Focus Features released a teaser trailer for The Beguiled. It’s not even two minutes long, but it’s enough to send our anticipation skyrocketing. Check it out for yourself below:

Set in the midst of the American Civil War, The Beguiled centers on a group of women living at a Confederate boarding school. Their sheltered existence is disrupted when they stumble upon an injured Union soldier and nurse him back to health. If the plot synopsis sounds mundane to you, the trailer suggests there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

In fact, it appears to be a straight-up melodrama, brimming with eroticism and hysteria – think Crimson Peak meets Gone Girl. And we couldn’t be happier. The rare female filmmaker widely recognized as an auteur, Coppola adheres to a particular style, using gauzy imagery to conjure a mood of ennui. Respectable, though, she is not. Her other period piece, 2006’s Marie Antoinette, featured New Order and Bow Wow Wow on its soundtrack, and she has always been a sharp critic of privilege and gender dynamics.

Of course, the trailer could be misleading, its sensational aspects enhanced by editing. (It seems tailored specifically to play in front of Fifty Shades Darker.)

The Beguiled reunites Coppola with Kirsten Dunst (The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette) and Elle Fanning (Somewhere). Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell also star as, respectively, the school headmistress and the Union soldier.

Most importantly, the visuals look gorgeous. We dare you not to fall in love with these stills:

Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, Kirsten Dunst, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard, Oona Lawrence, and Nicole Kidman in The Beguiled (2017), image courtesy of Focus Features Kirsten Dunst in The Beguiled (2017), image courtesy of Focus Features Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell in The Beguiled (2017), image courtesy of Focus Features Nicole Kidman in The Beguiled (2017), image courtesy of Focus Features

The Beguiled is set for release on June 23.

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