When it comes to revealing the inner workings of women, there's no one quite like Sofia Coppola. She first did it with the boxed-in Lisbon girls in her debut feature, The Virgin Suicides (1999), and she did it with her last feature, The Bling Ring (2013), about the real-life teen robbers who preyed on A-list Hollywood in the late 2000s. And she does it yet again in her latest, The Beguiled, a re-interpretation of the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood (based on the book by Thomas P. Cullinan).
The former child star has grown up to be the emotional center of Fargo.
Coppola stays true to the original by keeping the setting in an all-girls Southern school during the Civil War, but she shifts the perspective to her leading ladies, whose lives are shaken when one of the girls brings in an injured man (Colin Farrell) into their home. And not just any man, but a rival Yankee soldier, and a handsome one at that—brewing equal parts distrust and desire in everyone from the adolescents to the older headmistress (Nicole Kidman). Here, Coppola is reunited with Elle Fanning (who starred in her 2010 film Somewhere), and her muse Kirsten Dunst, who appeared in The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette (2006) with a brief cameo in The Bling Ring.
While The Beguiled is a distinctly Sofia Coppola film (see: the female perspective that carries the narrative, the dreamy aesthetic that so often occupies her films), it is missing the iconic pop soundtrack—something that has become essential to a Coppola movie. Instead, she makes the story's tension almost button-poppingly unbearable by working with an eerie, minimal score (composed by French band Phoenix, whose frontman Thomas Mars is Coppola's husband). Coppola, who just won Best Director at Cannes for The Beguiled, spoke with GQ about rewriting from a female perspective in her remake, avoiding campiness, and going gorier than usual.
GQ: I loved The Beguiled. Would you say this is the rare feminist film that struggles to pass the Bechdel test?
Sofia Coppola: The what test?
The Bechdel test.
I've never heard of that. What's that?
It's a test to see if two or more women in a movie talk about something other than a man.
Oh, I guess I've never studied film. That's so funny, but there are a lot of women talking about a man in this.
Right. I thought you handled the climactic tension in such a different manner from the original. Did you think about changing the story much, or were you mostly concerned with giving the women more of a perspective?
Yeah, I just wanted to tell the story from their point of view, so that was really my aim. I tried to forget about the original movie. I mean, I know the story from the movie and I loved the premise, and then I thought I'd track down the book, which is a bit pulpy. A man wrote it in the '60s, but it's written from the girls' point of view, so I got to retell the story and make it theirs. Because I thought the opposite with the original movie, that it was a about a group of women fooled by a man encountering them. I thought we'd start in their world, and a stranger comes in.
Did you find that the female characters were a little bit of a caricature in the 1971 version? Because that's kind of how I read them.
I don't want to fault [director Don Siegel's] work, but they were pretty crazy, and I wanted to make them more articulate and relatable. I just had more focus on them. I tried to understand where there were coming from.
This movie observes how women or girls behave differently in the presence of a man, and I love how you dramatize that with heavy breathing, swallowing, and all the close-ups on Colin Farrell's body. I want to know: What was it like to actually have so many women on set, and just Colin there as the sole representative for men?
Yeah, it was funny when he came in. My costume designer and a lot of the people in the art department were women, so it was funny to see him surrounded by so many women. Luckily he was a gentleman, and I don't think he flirted. But it was funny, because it was him lying on lacy pillows surrounded by all these women. Kirsten [Dunst] was like, "He gets to be the object for once," especially with all the stuff with him gardening, being the hunk.
Is it true that there's a sexy calendar of Colin?
We had to make that. Philippe Le Sourd, the [director of photography], was shooting stills so we could make a calendar.
In the original, Clint Eastwood comes off more immediately sleazy and up to no good, whereas that was a little bit more ambiguous with Colin.
Yeah, in the original film there's a voiceover or flashback, so it's really clear that he's a bad guy—whereas in this I wanted to see the story from the girls' point of view, where you're not quite sure. So you're looking at him like, "Can we trust him?" And they want to trust him and maybe they shouldn't, it's just not clear. It couldn't have just been a dumb hunk. He had to be mysterious and complicated enough for them to be intrigued.
There's no pop music here, which has become your trademark. Did you consider using any?
No, I never did, because it just didn't seem right for the mood of this movie. I wanted the movie to have a lot of tension and never release that, so there's just the very minimal tonal music by Phoenix, and then the sound design. But it was to sustain the atmosphere and tension of the story. Phoenix was just finishing their album, so I was sending them images and a few shots, and then they would send music back and forth. They knew what I was looking for. I was worried it was almost too perfect, but I think it leaves the tone that I wanted to feel at the end.
It works great. I guess the one pop music reference you have is Elle Fanning and Kirsten Dunst re-creating the Beyoncé video in an Instagram .
Oh yeah, that was their moment.
I keep reading about how fun this movie was to shoot. What's your fondest memory from the set?
I think one of my favorite moments was Kirsten and Elle were running around in their party dresses from the evening dinner scene and holding red Solo cups. So we made a Girls Gone Wild-style video set in the 1860s where they flash their ankles.
Congratulations on winning Best Director at Cannes, by the way. It's so well deserved, but also, it's insane you're only the second woman to receive this.
I know, I couldn't believe that. I never knew that until they said that. It's hard to believe.
I'm curious—do you still deal with, or have you ever been bothered by, people saying you're where you are now because of nepotism or anything like that?
No, I know that I've worked really hard. I'm so lucky that I grew up with a great film education, and because there aren't that many women directors, it was an advantage that I had connections in the film business. You've got to do what you can, but I'm confident that it's my work.
Yeah, I think your talent is undeniable.
Thank you. I work hard, so I know that.
There are a couple gory scenes in The Beguiled, which we don't usually see in your movies. Do you get queasy easily, shooting or watching those?
No, because I saw them making it. But it was really funny to be in a meeting with the special effects makeup guy. He was getting really into it like, "How big do you want the wound and the bone?" And I was like, "I don't know, whatever you think is best." I don't get into it, it's not my thing. My 10-year-old daughter loves gore, so I got her some of the leftover blood pads, the plastic ones, and she put them all over the house.
Oh my God.
It's not my thing, but I try to not be too dainty about it. Embrace it a little.
I love Nicole Kidman's look with the white dress and the blood all over her. That's such a good look.
That was so fun. She was walking around set with that nightgown and the blood, and it just felt like one of those old horror films. And I love when she holds the candelabra.
It must be such a delight to be reunited with Kirsten Dunst yet again. How has the dynamic between you shifted from The Virgin Suicides in 1999 to Marie Antoinette in 2006 to now?
We've always had a great working relationship and a connection, so I always love working with her. I love spending time with her. She's like a sister to me, and this time I was really impressed because she brought so much more to it. I knew she would be good, but she just brought so much more emotion and depth to that character. She's really the heart of the film. The movie could have become a total campfest, but because they all brought such humanity and emotion, I think it brings it up to another level. So that was a surprise, even though I knew she was going to be good.
Do you feel like the word "camp" or "campy" is used a little too much when describing projects involving women?
I never thought about that. I mean, I definitely thought we could go that way because it's just so heightened and dramatic, and so it was definitely kind of straddling that. We wanted it to have humor and have fun with it, but also be believable, that these characters were women that you could connect with.
In the sex scene between Kirsten and Colin, how did you get those buttons to pop off her dress so perfectly and dramatically?
I couldn't believe that that was the first take! We had the wardrobe person loosen the threads, because I said we need a real bodice-ripper moment, and they popped off on the floor like that. I was so excited that we had a real bodice-ripper moment, but that was good luck and the wardrobe department's help.
So you're also reunited here with Elle Fanning after Somewhere.
She cracks me up in this.
Who are you dying to work with again that wasn't in The Beguiled?
I mean, I would love to work with Bill Murray again.
What about someone you haven't worked with who you would like to?
I would like to work with Eddie Murphy. I don't know why.
