Sofia Coppola’s new film, The Beguiled, begins like a fairy tale. The intertitle, pink and evocative, announce the time as three years into the American Civil War, we are in Virginia. We see a young girl humming, traipsing through the woods to pick some mushrooms. It is both foreboding and mystical. This opening is not really what it’s all about, though. The Beguiled is about a small 
number of residents at Miss Martha’s school in Virginia three years into the war – two teachers, and five students. Their life of waiting is interrupted when one of the girls finds a bleeding Union Soldier in the woods. This new resident creates tension and then drama and then tragedy in the house.