‘The Beguiled’ disruptive

‘The Beguiled” is a strange and uncomfortable film in both of its iterations. Sofia Coppola’s take is more nuanced than the 1971 original, with deeper insight into the ladies of Ms. Farnsworth’s Seminary and perhaps not enough into the wounded soldier who disrupts their lives.

The writer-director brings her characteristic elegance to the film, which, like the original, is based on the 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan. Coppola’s Civil War South is all mossy woods, buttoned-up dresses and gated plantations, realized in immaculate detail.

While Coppola broadens the story’s female characters beyond the stereotypes shown in 1971, she leaves the soldier’s motives less clear, which makes his life-altering transgression harder to understand.

The story is set in Virginia in 1864. Despite the war raging right outside her property, Ms. Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) has continued to run her Seminary for Young Ladies, with a single teacher, Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), and five students. Everything changes for them when one of the youngest girls brings home a badly wounded Union soldier she discovered during a walk in the woods.

“You are a most unwelcome visitor,” Ms. Farnsworth tells the handsome Cpl. John McBurney (Colin Farrell), after stitching up his tattered leg.

McBurney is locked in the music room, but his presence in the house causes a stir among its residents, distracting them from their daily routines.

As McBurney continues his recovery, he gets closer to Edwina and Ms. Farnsworth, and even a few of the girls. But then he makes a move that alienates nearly all of them.

Clint Eastwood plays the soldier in the 1971 film, and flashbacks show that he’s a shifty guy. Farrell’s character, though, is less developed. He’s presented as decent and sincere, so his disruptive choices seem to come out of nowhere.

Ms. Farnsworth’s ultimate response also seems excessive, given the way her character unfolds.

Nevertheless, Coppola creates a portrait of the repressed, isolated lives of women and girls during wartime. And unlike in the 1971 film, Coppola’s characters have agency, even as they’re affected by the presence of a man in their midst.