Now available to rent on Amazon, Apple, Google Play $4.99
Director: Sofia Coppola
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning
Virginia. Three years into the civil war. A girl wanders the forest, looking for mushrooms, and comes across a wounded Union colonel, John McBurney (Colin Farrell), and takes him back to her school, the Seminary for Young Ladies. The school, run by the steely and pragmatic head-mistress Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), only has a few students left and one teacher, Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), around. Everyone else has ditched the Seminary to be with their families, or perhaps had existentialist crises about the conflict of teaching/learning sewing / violin / French as the country is torn apart, causing them to wander country roads in search of meaning (my fan-fiction, not really within the movie). The school is a mansion on a small plantation, and has run into disrepair, as the civil war is raging outside the iron gates. At first, the ladies hide the charming Union soldier from the Confederates, who check in on the school. Later, they are confronted by the consequences of this “Christian-minded” action, as McBurney disrupts the equilibrium of this little community. I’m comfortable giving away this plot (for free!) as the film is not that interested in it. Instead, it luxuriates in the humid and tense atmosphere of a school being reclaimed by nature and repressed feelings. And there’s the crux.
