This is Sofia Coppola’s spellbinding revisiting of a book first filmed as a forgettable Clint Eastwood vehicle. She creates a world of pinafores, French grammar and dappled leaves and lets you see it curdle into terror.
The two teachers (Kidman and Kirsten Dunst as Miss Edwina) and four girls are holding out in the first years of the war.
The girls do lessons and dig the vegetable garden (‘The slaves left’) under the protection of Confederate military patrols. While out picking mushrooms, Miss Amy (Oona Laurence) finds an injured Union soldier, a mercenary, and brings him in. The women decide to hide him until his leg heals.
