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Now that awards season is officially over, we can settle into 2017 and put our full focus on the films coming up in the year ahead and Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled has to be one of the most compelling pieces on the docket. Based on the Thomas Cullinan novel of the same name, the film stars Nicole Kidman as the headmistress of a seminary for young ladies in Civil War-era Virginia. The school’s seclusion is disrupted when a wounded soldier from the Union Army, played by Colin Farrell, arrives and kicks off a yarn of “seduction and jealousy.”

Today brings a batch of new images from the film, and they're just spectacular looking; heavy with moody ambiance and utterly rich with gothic imagery. To land that atmosphere, Coppola teamed with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (The Grandmaster) along with her Somewhere and The Bling Ring costume designer Stacey Battat. Coppola is making an exciting shift here -- while there are certainly traces of her eye for ethereal beauty and fondness for pale blondes, she's treading in genre territory here and she's chosen a story that leaves plenty of room for complex discussions about gender dynamics and social posturing. I could very easily see this feeling like a sister film to The Virgin Suicides, and that would be a welcome treat, indeed.

Check out the images below (h/t The Playlist). Also starring Kirsten Dunst, Elle FanningThe Nice Guys standout Angourie Rice, and Pete’s Dragon actress Oona Laurence, The Beguiled opens in theaters on June 30th.

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Image via Focus Features
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Image via Focus Features
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Image via Focus Features
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Image via Focus Features
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Image via Focus Features

Here’s the official synopsis for The Beguiled:

The Beguiled, adapted by Sofia Coppola from Thomas Cullinan’s novel of the same name, unfolds in a girls’ school in the state of Virginia in 1864. As the Civil War rages, The Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies has been sheltered from the outside world— until the day a wounded Union soldier is discovered nearby and taken in.