‘The Beguiled’ to be shown in Manila Sept. 6

Film enthusiasts in Manila can finally watch one of this year’s most critically-acclaimed films, Sofia Coppola’s atmospheric thriller, “The Beguiled.”

Coppola bagged the best director award in this year’s 70^th International Cannes Film Festival for the film, the first time in 56 years that a woman has taken the top honor.

The Beguiled opens exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas in Greenbelt 1 and Trinoma on September 6, 2016.

Adapted from the novel by Thomas Cullinan, The Beguiled is a sexually charged tale set in 1864, three years into the Civil War, at a Southern girls’ boarding school. An injured Union soldier takes refuge and sheltered young women tend to his wounds.

The house is taken over with sexual tension and dangerous rivalries, and taboos are broken in an unexpected turn of events.

Taking off from Don Siegel’s 1971 film The Beguiled, Coppola explored the theme of women isolated during the Civil War. She went back to the book, as she wrote the screenplay adaptation, to tell the story from the female characters’ perspective for her film.

“So The Beguiled would be a reinterpretation,” she said. “The premise is loaded because power dynamics between men and women are universal. There’s always a mystery between men and women.”

The Beguiled is distributed in the Philippines by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.