Yes No Maybe So: "The Beguiled"
Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 5:50PM #vengefulbitches forever
The teaser for Sofia Coppola's remake of The Beguiled (2017) is upon us and it is glorious if surprisingly faithful. In fact, if you watched the original 1971 movie with us during the last season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot you'll be hard pressed to spot many immediate differences beyond of course the new cast. Nicole Kidman takes the Geraldine Page role (we worship Kidman but good luck topping one of Page's juiciest star turns), Colin Farrell gets the Clint Eastwood wounded womanizing soldier part, Kiki steps in for Elizabeth Hartman, and Oona Laurence (who was so good opposite Gyllenhaal in Southpaw) plays the Pamela Ferdin role.
If you haven't yet seen the trailer or would like to watch it again (I'm on round 5) it's after the jump along with a short "Yes No Maybe So"...
Ready? Let's break it down with our patented Yes No Maybe So system
YES
• the first little girl stroll in the woods
• the "shhhhh"
• Why can't Colin Farrell be under every tree we walk by?
• The mossy shot of the school
• Kirsten Dunst praying
• Nicole Kidman considering taking a peak at Colin's family jewels as she bathes him. Remember when she did that in Far and Away with Tom Cruise?
• Kiki staring out the window and her "to be taken far away from here" line reading... mysteriously depressed daydreaming Kiki Dunst is the best Kiki Dunst, don't you think?
• All those shots of Nicole Kidman with her schoolchildren - they look so threatening even when they're being polite
• The music once shit goes down (and when we say "shit going down" in this case we mean Colin and the girls getting down) with the insanely great cast shots interspersed with title cards.
• Nicole Kidman looks like she was lifted directly from Cold Mountain!
• More shit going down because of the original shit going down.
• And the coup de grace...
What have you done to me? You vengeful bitches!!!
• ...yeah, I said yes to every moment in the trailer. What?
MAYBE SO
• um... er... Why not "RIGHT NOW" instead of "summer"?
• what if Sofia hasn't rethunk it at all? You know what the bitches have done to him if you've seen the original. The original does feel very forward feminist so maybe Coppola didn't have to update? Although it will be weird if it's TOTALLY faithful.
• Oh wait she did change something. She seems to have removed the sole black woman, Hallie (very well played by Mae Mercer in the original) who works for Martha and is suspicious of the soldier in the way the girls aren't. This seems like a very problematic thing to change but we'll see...
NO
• You're joking, right?
Reader Comments (55)
I never heard of the original film. :-/ Clint and Geraldine Page? Seriously?
What do the vengeful bitches do to my beloved Colinnnn?
Hoping for a return to form for Sofia Coppola after some unfortunate misfires. Love the cast, which I'll mainly see for Colin and Legend. Though I'm extremely curious
about the original now.
Taking out the one black character set in the antebellum South? Oh, Sofia. Gurl bye.
Tony T - It's not a remake of the Eastwood movie, it's adapted directly from the novel, not from the movie.
Oh please Fassebender doesn't have to be in every film. Colin is a fine actor too and looks well cast here.
^no, Colin doesn't look right for this movie
- loved him in The Lobster, though - first time I've really liked him.
Hope he's great in Lanthmos' next, too.
Are we really thinking Sofia Coppola rounded up Kidman, Dunst, Farrell and Fanning to do a scene by scene remake? what are the real odds of that? Do directors as singular as Coppola really do that? They find a movie they like and convince a bunch of A-listers to re-enact it. I'm having some difficulty with this concept.
If the character of Hallie has been removed, then it's not a "scene by scene" remake.