Five films into an already remarkable career, Academy Award-winning writer-director Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette) has developed an instantly recognisable cinematic style – languid, lyrical and dreamlike, attuned both to youthful energy and its melancholy shadow.

Her sixth film, The Beguiled, an adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan’s novel of the same name, unfolds in 1863, as the American Civil War curdles in its third year.

The scene is a girl’s boarding school in Virginia, a sphere of carefully protected femininity kept largely isolated from the violent conflict rocking the country. The school’s buttoned-up routine is interrupted, however, when the women secretly take an injured enemy soldier (Golden Globe Award-winner Colin Farrell) into their care.

As they grant him refuge and tend to his wounds, the school simmers over with repressed desires and sexual tension, enmeshing the school’s headmistress (Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman) and the girls under her care in volatile rivalries.

The story has been adapted for the screen before, in a 1971 version directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood.

Coppola, however, makes the film entirely her own, paring away all but the most essential elements of the story, leaving a film where emotion and character are conveyed subtly, through shifts in facial expressions, quiet glances and changes in the light. The film also stars Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning.

The screening will take place on Wednesday at St James Cavalier, Valletta, at 7.30pm. For more information and to book tickets, visit www.kreattivita.org/en/event/the-beguiled.