BEFORE: I'm staying at my parents' house in Massachusetts for a couple days, so I don't have my usual computer - forced to use a PC with Windows, because my sister buys them computer tech, while I supply them with cable and internet. So my posts may look a little different until I can get back to New York and my Mac, where I know how everything works. But coming up for a weekend conveniently located between Mothers Day and Fathers Day is something of a time-saver, plus there's a German picnic in the next town over tomorrow, and my mother and I like to go to that together. It's a win-win, really.
Colin Farrell carries over from "The Lobster", and I'll follow a different actor out of this one tomorrow.
THE PLOT: The unexpected arrival of a wounded Union soldier at a girls school in Virginia during the Civil War leads to jealousy and betrayal.
AFTER: There's just not a lot happening here, unless dramatic tension is your thing, that is. With one wounded man recovering from a battle wound in a large Southern mansion among two women and five younger girls, you can probably see that's a recipe for disaster, once he's a bit healthier and the women start vying for his attention. This highlights something about wars that you usually don't hear people talking about, that they're often followed by a shortage of men. For some time after the Civil War there just weren't enough men to go around, if this film is to be believed.
But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. First the Union soldier is found by one of the girls at this "school", and the women have to determine the best way to handle the situation. Turning him over to the Confederate army means almost certain death, so they decide to hold off until he heals from his injury. And also because that would bring the story to a close much too soon.
Instead there's a few days of recovery, complete with awkward spongebaths and even more awkward flirting. Then the women start undercutting each other in a kind of competition for his affection, and even the girls who are much too young for this sort of thing start dressing nicer and wearing more jewelry. I guess it was a different time, the 1860's. The swinging sixties? And the women seem to stop viewing him as the enemy and only as a man, which seems like something of a mistake.
The situation gets worse before it gets better - no spoilers here but given the circumstances it's hard to see how this could possibly end well. And it's a bit tough to tell whether the soldier is being nice to his saviors, or manipulating them to get the result that he wants, which is to be released, or perhaps to stay with the women until the war ends and his situation improves. But at some point he begins acting irrationally, forcing the women to find another way to get out of their situation.
I didn't realize that another version of this story was released in 1971, starring Clint Eastwood. If I had known that, I might have tried to work in that older version last week when I had some Eastwood films around Memorial Day. Oh, well.
Also starring Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Elle Fanning (last seen in "Live By Night"), Oona Laurence (last seen in "Southpaw"), Angourie Rice (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Addison Riecke, Emma Howard, Wayne Pere, Matt Story, Joel Albin
RATING: 4 out of 10 French lessons
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