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Nicole Kidman plays the head of a school for gentile young
ladies trapped behind the gates of a country mansion as the
American Civil War rages around them. The arrival of Farrell, an
injured Yankee soldier, awakens repressed desires.
"At the core of it is the power struggles between the male and
female ... hopefully in an entertaining and juicy story,"
Coppola told a news conference after the film festival
screening.
Years after seeing the Eastwood movie, by "Dirty Harry" director
Don Siegel, Coppola decided to drop her resistance to remakes.
"It really stayed in my mind. The premise was something I had
never seen. The original movie is from the male point of view,
the soldier's point of view, of this women's world and I thought
it would be interesting to go back and find the book and tell
the same premise from the women characters' point of view."
"Colin, our token male, was a good sport about being our
‘object’," she said of the only significant male presence among
a strong cast that includes Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning.
The film closed to rapturous applause in Cannes. Early reviews
were positive, although some critics said it lacked some of the
punch of the original.
"As a comparison to Siegel’s more problematic, yet also more
full-throated, luridly bonkers take on Thomas Cullinan’s novel,
it feels strangely unkinked and scrubbed clean," wrote Jessica
Kiang on website The Playlist.
"But enough about what isn’t here, because there’s plenty that
is, in particular the vivid and extremely present performances.
"
If Coppola was looking for "juicy" performances, she got them,
not least from Kidman, who oozes southern charm with a
undercurrents of sexual desire and menace.
After wishing Farrell a gentile "bon appetit" towards the end of
the movie, Kiang said, "she gets a reaction shot at the head of
a dinner table which would be worth the price of entry alone."
(Editing by Richard Lough)
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