Colin Farrell and Elle Fanning (Ben Rothstein / Focus Features)

From Lost in Translation to Marie Antoinette to The Bling Ring, the films of Sofia Coppola frequently document the alienation of the famous and privileged. So what drew her to remake a Clint Eastwood movie? The Beguiled is perhaps most like Coppola’s feature debut The Virgin Suicides, charting the effect of a male intruder on a group of isolated women in Civil War-era Virginia.

The movie begins much like Don Siegel’s 1971 original. It’s 1864.12-year old Amy (Oona Laurence) is gathering mushrooms in the woods near the Farnsworth Seminary, an all-girls boarding school, when she is startled to find the wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell), who requests the young girl’s help. Despite some objections from students unwilling to tend to the enemy, the school’s head, Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) agrees to tend to McBurney until he is well enough to leave. But the presence of a man at a girls’ school leads to a complicated dynamic of alliances and betrayals that inevitably turns destructive.

What led Coppola to remake this film now? Perhaps the key is in a line from Miss Martha, who explains to her students (with the encouragement of a girl who tells her it would be the Christian thing to do) that you should see McBurney not as an enemy but as an individual, which seems to address these contentious times.

Indeed, Coppola’s version of the film introduced McBurney as a more benign figure. While in the original, Clint Eastwood almost immediately steals a kiss from the girl who rescues him, in the guise of hiding from Confederate troops, Farrell’s Union soldier doesn’t come off as a horndog on the make.

Coppola tells a somewhat more efficient story, though not without controversy for leaving out a slave narrative. While Siegel’s version filled you in on background with flashbacks, letting you know that McBurney lied about his injury and Miss Martha had an incestuous relationship with her brother, this remake puts everyone on a level playing field; you never learn anybody’s history.

Miss Martha and her young charges increasingly battle for McBurney’s attention, and while Eastwood came off as a more active participant, Farrell seems more of a blank slate. While the Farnsworth residents are potentially vulnerable to molestation from McBurney or soldiers of any stripe that might happen by the school, the breakdown of this community comes from an internal dynamic fueled by the unexpected visitor.

In some ways, Coppola improves on the original film, but at the very least the different actors make for a different dynamic; Kirsten Dunst is a more mature Edwina than Elizabeth Hartmann, and without the sordid context, Kidman is a steadier Miss Martha than Geraldine Page. You don’t need to have seen the original film to appreciate the remake, but its worth seeing both for a fascinating contrast.

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The Beguiled
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola.
Based on the book by Thomas Cullinan and the screenplay by Albert Maltz and Irene Camp
With Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell
Rated R for some sexuality.
93 minutes
Opens today at area theaters, including Landmark E Street Cinema and the AFI Silver.