Starring Nicole Kidman. Rated PG

Sofia Coppola’s dreamily set new film raises the question of who is the beguiler and who is the beguiled. When hunky wounded soldier McBurney (Colin Farrell) is taken in by a girls’ school during the American Civil War, he charms them into fits of blushing and jealous rivalry. But, under the strict control of their steely headmistress, Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), these polite residents might be more scheming than they seem.

Ultimately, though, the main beguiler may be Coppola herself, who, through rich atmosphere and enigmatic characters, bewitches her audience. That’s because her taut little study of sexual tension is not too deep; like her Marie Antoinette, it doesn’t make grand political-historical statements. It even edges into genres like horror and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte–style melodrama.

Set in Virginia, The Beguiled is lush with Spanish moss, the girls’ white-pillared residence replete with waving lace curtains and flickering candelabra. A chorus of crickets echoes in from outside, punctuated by the odd far-off cannon blast.

Miss Martha makes it clear McBurney is an unwelcome Union soldier who’ll be turned over to the Confederates as soon as his torn-up leg heals. But the next thing you know, she’s giving him a sponge bath.

Coppola has always had an interest in the hormonal angst of teen girlhood, embodied most hot and heavily here by Elle Fanning’s Alicia. Those urges are played compellingly off the more mature yearnings of Miss Martha, who wears her corseted linen like armour, and of the grim, melancholy teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst). Both do far more with their roles than the script gives them, retaining a delicious enigma about their motivations.

Like so many of Coppola’s heroines, the women here are isolated and unfulfilled, forced into the decorative roles given to them by society—in this case, a Confederate South on the brink of collapse. (Even as the girls learn needlepoint and French, the pristine mansion they’re living in is being slowly swallowed by the encroaching wilderness.)

Much has been made of Coppola’s choice to remove the black female slave character that played such a pivotal role in Thomas Cullinan’s original novel and in the 1971 Clint Eastwood movie based on it. While that would have brought more complexity and historical context to the story, this surprisingly dark little slice of southern gothic still beguiles with its not inconsiderable charms.