The Beguiled feels like restrained madness, a melodrama with emotions that feel cold and calculated at the same time as heightened. Everything from its costuming to its limited score to its cinematography feed into Coppola’s vision of this Civil War-era household, and the mood conveyed by its common establishing shot–a hazy mist cloaking the grounds–is sustained through the story that subsequently unfolds. This is a tale of sexuality and desire set against both a historical and contemporary backdrop, and Coppola approaches the film by first carefully calibrating the environment; then, she allows the women and those desires to simmer within the repression and mundanity that their household represents.
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