![]() Fred Roos, a producer on all Sofia’s features who’s known her since she was a girl, says, “The atmosphere on all her films is the same. “Sofia’s the best,” Fanning tells me, “like a girlfriend.” The last time she worked with Sofia, on Somewhere, she was 11 now she’s 18 and, she says proudly, this is her first location shoot without her mother. Many of the people on The Beguiled are veterans of her five previous films, and their familiarity and fondness for her and one another gives the group the extended-family feel of a repertory company. And here is Sofia in their midst: a slight, unassuming figure in a navy anorak, a white shirt, jeans and sneakers, reviewing images on an iPad with the cinematographer, presiding over everything with quiet authority and a voice so soft it’s as if she’s telling you even the weather forecast in confidence. Firth, wearing a bathrobe over a nightshirt, sits with his back to the table, smoking and staring out at the rain. Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, in high-necked, long-sleeved, ankle-length cotton dresses that look like they were made from the same pattern 150 years ago, are out back on the porch, gathered around a long table, chatting with the producers, the dialect coach, the art director. There, he’s nursed back to health by a houseful of women competing for his attention. The adjacent dining room has been set up for the next scene as a bedroom for Colin Farrell, playing a Union soldier who’s left for dead in the woods of Virginia during the US Civil War and rescued by a young girl who takes him to her boarding school. The one emblazoned with Sofia Coppola’s name is empty. The cameramen mill around the parlour, cleared of furniture to make way for their equipment and four brown canvas directors’ chairs. ![]() ![]() There are storms in the area, and the first shot of the day has been delayed by lightning. Sofia Coppola is down to the last three days of shooting The Beguiled on location in New Orleans, in an antebellum mansion with gilt-framed mirrors above marble mantelpieces and portraits of somebody’s ancestors in the hallway, but it’s not so easy to locate her. Tense faces, hushed voices – the more you encounter, the closer you get, until, at the centre of it all, you come upon an autocrat whose demeanour leaves no doubt as to who’s in charge. If you’re looking for the director on a film set, chances are you can find him ( and, let’s face it, it’s usually a man ) by following the anxiety in the air to its source. ![]()
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