Few sights are more formidable than a Southern schoolmarm in hoop skirt and pin-tucked bodice, with delicate white hands fit to sew a dainty seam. Or a gaping wound. Or a shroud.
Be very afraid: for Nicole Kidman is Miss Martha, a devout black-browed disciplinarian in a young ladies’ seminary in Virginia, where the smoke of Civil War cannons hangs on the air like the Spanish moss in the trees beyond the mansion.
