#but ultimately it’s what she thinks of Edwina and that’s her version

[sweetesthaaze]

Something I wish people understood about Edwina. . .

. . . is that the writers did a terrible job at writing her character. That’s why there are so many different opinions about her. Some love her, some hate her, and some people are just neutral. And the differing opinions are astronomical and people get very easily defensive of their opinion.

The writers flip-flopped all over the place with how they wanted Edwina to be. And by doing so, they left SO much unsaid and underdeveloped. People are then left to fill in the blanks themselves and come up with their own version of Edwina. CVD has his own, CC has her own, I have my own, etc.

It’s why half of the arguments about her are always “I don’t see it that way . . .” because there’s so much the writers didn’t do for Edwina that there are countless ways to interpret her actions and words. Her characterization is off because it was never fully developed, no matter how much CVD likes to claim otherwise.

The writers did such a bad job with writing Edwina, that her characterization has been left up to the viewer to decide.

It’s okay to like Edwina. It’s okay to not like Edwina. But you can’t say most people’s interpretation of Edwina’s character are wrong when there are SO many blanks in her character that need to be filled in and people fill them in differently. And I think if people understood that, there would be less discourse in the fandom.

#bridgerton #edwina sharma #charithra chandran #sweetestviscount #you’re also allowed to disagree #like I don’t agree with CC’s version of Edwina #and maybe I think she’s wrong #but ultimately it’s what she thinks of Edwina and that’s her version

[collectionoftulips]

I was just watching strictly and I was wondering- how would you see kanthony in strictly? Both profs? One of them being the Prof and the other being paired up with them (and if that who's the prof). Intrigued by what you would think (if you're into that ofc)

❤️ What a lovely ask, thank you! I apologise for taking a second to reply to it - I was writing when I wasn't doing life admin and working. (I'm also jumping here and say I'm very very sorry for writing this massive response you probably weren't asking for - I had a lot of fun imagining this)

I have to admit that I'm not a massive Strictly person, so I haven't seen too much of it, but I'm familiar with the format. I've seen other countries' versions of Strictly a bit more than Strictly itself, weirdly.

If I wrote a Strictly AU for Kathony, to me, it would make sense to have Anthony as the celeb and Kate being the professional dancer. Kate would be both classically trained in ballet and contemporary dance but really found that she excelled (and loved) ballroom (I've only got a cursory knowledge of dance styles). Unfortunately, her previous partner Tom Dorset (you know I gotta include my man Dorset in a Kathony fic, why do I love this almost background character?) got an injury and Kate grew very disillusioned with the professional dancing scene, and especially the prospect of not dancing with Dorset.

However, because she has spent the past few years focusing on her dancing career and her studies at uni got interrupted by the death of her father years prior, Kate really starts to worry about how to make ends meet. She could maybe do some temp jobs and there's the supermarket around the corner that might be looking for staff, but with the daily expenses rising (Brexit and cost of living crisis and almost 20 years of austerity woohooo!), she's really not sure how she's going to make ends meet. Then Edwina points out that the BBC are looking for new professionals to join Strictly and Kate has been approached a few times about whether she would be interested, but Kate had long ago decided it's not her thing. The last thing she wants to do is be in the tabloids and be accused of falling the so-called Strictly Curse. It was never going to happen. Ever.

Then Kate starts panicking about the long-term viability of paying her bills, so she phones her contact just to make some casual enquiries, only to hear what the salary would be. Under other circumstances, Kate might have more pride about the whole situation but she agrees to join the new cast of professionals then and there. It's cutting it fine to the announcement but actually another of their professionals pulled out last minute (Siena) and so they had an opening, and actually, the contact thinks that they might have the perfect candidate to dance with Kate.

Kate at this point would be willing to dance with a potato if it meant that she got paid, so she doesn't really pay attention.

Anthony, on the other hand, first got his start in show biz doing some presenting gigs first at local news programmes, then children's programming while he was going to drama school part-time and then he pivoted to acting once he finished drama school. He had a few small guest spots on your Christmas costume dramas and he tries not to get his low-key type casting of ambitious man who ultimately does the wrong thing for selfish reasons get to him. As much as he tries to think that it isn't personal, the typecasting just seems a little bit too specific. Then he got his big break playing the supporting character to the main male lead in television show 'loosely' 'inspired' by Love Island. He doesn't have top billing, but he's a fan favourite. Then, after a disastrous stint attending the Baftas to present an award, a video goes viral of an uncharacteristically shitfaced Anthony embarrassing himself in front of the majority of his industry while making out with anyone who was nearby. His agent nearly quits in the aftermath of it all and in an attempt to change the narrative around his public persona, he agrees what many a disgraced public figure has done before - agree to go on Strictly.

For a hot second, it looks like an old ex-girlfriend of his, Siena, was gonna be his dancing partner, which would be a unique form of torture, but she pulls out at the last minute and gets replaced by he doesn't quite know who yet. He tries to get some clarity on the situation, until he finds out that they've finally found his dancing partner. Someone named Kate Sharma, who apparently was an up and coming star on the ballroom circuit.

Anthony had of course unearthed a few youtube videos of her dancing career, including a video or two from her uni days where she was dancing more contemporary stuff with friends, and he is actually really excited about being paired up with Kate. He doesn't know dancing per say, but he can tell that Kate has talent. She has that it factor that of course needed to accompany hard training, but she is able to convey so much with her movements and has enough charisma to spare, even by industry standards. Plus, it doesn't hurt that she's quite possibly one of the most beautiful women he has ever seen.

Unfortunately, however, their first meeting does not go according to plan. In fact, Anthony is willing to admit it actually goes disastrously wrong. Kate overhears him saying the wrong thing as the cameras are getting set up and while she is pleasant in front of the cameras, he can tell by the glint in her eye that she hates his guts. Which was fine. It was fine. They would only have to do this for a few weeks and Anthony can be cordial.

What neither of them know, is that the Strictly curse has other ideas...

That's basically how I would sort of do a Strictly AU. Don't know if it would be of interest etc but something like that would be my take on it. And I would probably find some way of inadvertently adding 5963 million layers of angst on top of this enemies-to-lovers set up.

#kathony #kanthony

[alicuntisms]

same for ao3, but blocking only means they're not allowed to comment on your fic and you on theirs, otherwise their works show up. i blocked a couple of authors in the kathony tag lol, like one of them had the most bizzare out of character fic that's not even like, a different interpretation, it's that 'what show have you been watching???' meme. like at one point I have to wonder what about these characters did they even like when what they wrote is so different from everything we know about kate and anthony, books or show, that beyond names and basic family structures, there's barely any similarity. I get some people hate edwina, but I genuinely don't understand how they can claim they love kate and think she'd be that horrible to mary and edwina. someone is projecting a bit too much...

i have a very strong suspicion which fic authors you are talking about.....

but seriously. i can understand disliking a character, not vibing with them and all that (i'm looking at you eloise bridgerton), but the absolute HATRED over what? three lines that were written into and said during an ARGUMENT after a CRAZY betrayal? is batshit fucking crazy to me. and i totally agree - i am of the mind that you can't violently hate edwina or mary and claim to be a kate stan. mainly because her love of her sister and her step-mother is so intrinsic to her character that you're ultimately denying a HUGE part of who she is (the same can be said for those people who think anthony would shun edwina or mary or would cut his own family off for the so called 'slights' that they've committed against anthony and like good god is that whole thought process an annoying one!)

i know there's always going to be the person who's like 'well i like the book version of edwina! i don't hate the character! just the show!' and like. that's a flimsy argument as far as i'm concerned especially cause edwina is such a non-factor throughout both mediums. she literally is there to do nothing, be pretty, and to cause weightless drama between kate and anthony. i say it's weightless because we all know that edwina is not going to be the thing that keeps them apart. we know that the show is going to give us kanthony HEA.

seriously the need for people to find a villain in the story (when sorry not sorry but pen/LW is RIGHT THERE) is kind of ridiculous. not every story has a bad guy. sometimes it's just a bunch of people muddling through life making mistakes and trying to fix them...you know kind of like how life works? crazy, i know.

its all just very very very very exhausting.

#fun fact: i have too many opinions #so if you want to ask me some you should! #i swear i'm not mean lol #*insert old man yells at cloud pic*

[aspoonfuloffiction]

I definitely get why Edwina wouldn’t be keen to attend their wedding—especially if it was soon after. I guess it just bums me out the show ruined their relationship to that extent. I’m sure it would be repaired with time, but they pushed the “sister love story” thing so hard and I just didn’t see it. I also don’t personally think Edwina was a more dynamic and three dimensional character for all the changes the show made. She was still ultimately there to get in the middle of Kate and Anthony. We don’t know anything about her interior life at all.

I disagree I think Edwina represents women (particularly Desi woman) who have their whole life been told exactly who to be, what to do, how to act. And then they grow up and don’t actually recognize who it is they are. Every part of them has been dictated by others.

Edwina chose to reclaim her life at the end. She’s on a journey of self reflection, she’s no longer living Kate’s dreams she’s going to try to figure out her own dreams on her own. Thats what her speech to Anthony and Kate was about in the chapel. And its what her conversation with Kate was about in episode 8 that they both live more honest versions on their lives. Neither needs to live for someone else anymore.

Edwina in the books is just a prop for Kate but show Edwina goes on her own journey and that was important to me in terms of south asian representation because to watch a young Indian woman essentially be treated as “breeding stock” as book Edwina is for most of TVWLM with no insight into her life or her struggles outside of a single conversation about how her sister’s bee induced wedding allowed her to actually be herself- would be horrible.

Book Edwina got out of her life circumstances on accident. Show Edwina got out of her life circumstances on purpose and thats the difference.

I enjoyed almost all the changes to the Sharma family and I think they help tell a more honest story about families and especially Indian families.

#bridgerton #asks #kate sharma #edwina sharma

[triviareads]

I think I’m most let down by Edwina & Anthony’s courtship going so far - I’m ok with other changes to plot, but I just hate that?

I agree it would be one dimensional for Edwina to just not care about Kate & Anthony getting together, and she has every right to be annoyed about.

I just don’t understand how Anthony would be fine marrying Edwina despite everything and letting it get that far? I can buy it being something book Anthony would have done if fate hadn’t intervened, and I quite like that it seems he is going to choose Kate not just be made to by a bee, but - I just cant buy that Edwina wouldn’t have noticed something going on, and that no one around them was going to stop it. And that Anthony was prepared to go through that all for duty? What duty? Kate I understand not wanting to hurt her sister but yeah - I’m just worried that it’s going to seem like he doesn’t care about Kate.

Firstly, I think this change in plot was to infuse more drama in S2 and isn't portraying the most rational behavior in the process, and I'm Here for the drama.

Even if Edwina had noticed something was going on once she was engaged, there was very little she could do, like breaking it off with Anthony, without being seen as a bad person by the entire ton and ruining her reputation, because sexism.

Anthony's sense of duty is extraordinarily deluded considering how little obstacles the man his- he has money, he has a supportive family, and he has a high position in society. All I can guess is, maybe his sense of duty pressures him to uphold this perfection by seeking the ton's ideal for a wife? And of course the latent daddy issues.

But yeah, the notion of "duty" in the historical sense is very difficult to understand. It's very similar to the skewed version of what it means to have "honor" from the Green Knight, which I watched last summer, or in Hinduism, the concept of dharma and how a lot of our gods adhered to the principles of dharma even when it caused, from our modern point of view, harm (ex: Rama puts rajyadharma over kuladharma with the whole Sita-chastity situation that ultimately causes him to leave her in the forest, pregnant, and we have to remember this man is literally a god on Earth).

#bridgerton #anthony bridgerton #ask #kate sharma

[snarkydefense]

Quick Take: Set against a haunting and ethereal backdrop of Southern Gothic beauty, with plumes of smoke and echoes of cannon fire in the distance; Coppola’s macabre, darkly sensual drama plays out within the walls of an antebellum homestead and is the brutally winding tale about the consequences of f*king with the wrong set of females.

Grade: B – (barely)

The Particulars:

Sofia Coppola’s latest, The Beguiled is a remake of a 1971 Clint Eastwood film (depending on who you ask, they might say flop). The premise is relatively simple, mundane even. It’s the Civil War in Virginia, and a wounded Union soldier, Corporal John McBurney, fleeing – insert deserter here – a nearby battlefield gets discovered in the woods by a young girl and taken back to the mostly deserted all-girls charm school where she resides. Upon their return, this sweet-faced manipulator convinces the headmistress that it wouldn’t be the “Christian thing” to turn him over injured; so, these loyal Confederate daughters decide to harbor him…just until he’s well.

This waffling over permitting his presence in their home continues – with ever more ridiculously convoluted reasoning tossed about – as this soldier slowly, but surely, gets a read on the personalities of the home’s cloistered female inhabitants.

He cultivates his young savior Amy (Oona Laurence), charms her youthful classmates Jane (Angourie Rice), Marie (Addison Riecke), and Emily (Emma Howard) each in turn, accepts the brazen advances of budding seductress Alicia (Elle Fanning), woos their teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) with avowals of love, and plays coy with their headmistress Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) dangling helpful male companionship just out of reach.

He’s a gorgeous, charming man – we are talking about Colin Farrell speaking with his Irish accent all over the place – alone in a house full of females (of varied ages) who’ve been sequestered as a consequence of war. They’re all coquettish and intent upon capturing his attention in some fashion or form.

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Colin Farrell’s McBurney is equal parts compelling and hawkish. His enticements and lures are believable – because of his face if nothing else – and fuel audience belief in the utterly girlish (no it’s really not a compliment) responses to his presence. I can’t think of another actor who would have anchored this roll as well and kept it from coming across with such a heightened creep factor that overshadowed all else.

The tension simmers and smolders as McBurney gaslights each child or woman, expertly. All is well until things are decidedly not well and the ladies find themselves facing an enraged McBurney stripped of all artifice and out for vengeance.

The Beguiled is an intense tale of the vagaries of pride, and a coming of age story overrun with psychosexual behavior. It’s an allegorical examination of the test of one’s will and survival instinct you could say. But it’s not without its issues…

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There’s a point in the 1971 film where a drunken and enraged McBurney threatens to drag house slave, Hallie, off and “try his luck,” a tidy (censor friendly) euphemism for raping a black woman. In the Coppola version, not only is this scene excised, Hallie is as well. In her absence, the care taking duties are split between Miss Martha and Edwina – because that would’ve been likely during this period in the real south…not.

Keeping such a scene (and this character) between McBurney and Hallie – it didn’t necessarily have to be reverting to the belabored rape trope – would’ve drawn the threat he posed to their persons fully into the open and increased the tension at the dangerous shift in power dynamics. Without it, the sense of threat thickening the air is severely lessened. It casts their actions and choices in the film’s climax more as spiteful rather than self-preserving.

One of the major failings of the Coppola version is Edwina, played by Dunst. This character is horribly under developed and lacking in depth. Another drawback of Coppola’s short-sighted decision to cut out any people of color from her story; Edwina’s backstory is essentially lost.

Edwina should be a mixed-race woman. I’m not being PC here, I’m stating fact. In the novel by Thomas Cullinan, he’s very clear about the teacher’s ethnic origins. It’s what sets her apart from the other inhabitants in the school. It’s the justification for why she’s treated as less than by her students. It’s why the headmistress frequently makes pointed remarks about her background in front of the girls as though she exists to be an exemplar to judge themselves against.

Coppola retained all of these other character elements but didn’t even bother to make any attempt to anchor them in some personal history as they relate to the Edwina character for Dunst. As a result, her portrayal of the woman just makes her appear weak and is patently empty in the end.

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Coppola had the opportunity to highlight the inner-gender power dynamics at work in this house and weave those threads into her greater story arc in a way that would’ve added nuance, angst, foreboding, and explained the feelings behind Edwina’s choices and actions.

Instead, she chose the coward’s way and failed both the character she did create as well as the purported focus on gender-based power dynamics as the underlying theme of the film.

Her poor excuses for removing black women from her film lessen The Beguiled in a way that sullied its value for me. I’m delighted to see a film set during the Civil War that doesn’t wallow in the obvious themes of the era.

I’m dismayed that a filmmaker of Coppola’s caliber believes that including the black women who would’ve (and should’ve) been present (and how they would’ve existed) in this period piece exploring male/female and female/female power dynamics of the time (it’s 1864 in case you were wondering) isn’t work worth doing or considered a relevant and important story component.

The Beguiled isn’t a bad movie; plenty of people will respond positively to its languidly gothic sensibilities, Colin Farrell’s skillfulness, the young girls’ portrayals of the various stages – and incumbent attitudes – of maturing females and Kidman’s stoic restraint and refined demeanor. It handles its themes in ways distinct to Coppola’s directing style and is on that level way successful; but it could’ve and should’ve been better.

Sofia Coppola chose a revisionist lens out of a sense of self-preservation and that just smacks of disrespect to me. It had a decidedly noticeable detrimental effect on the overall emotional depth of the movie and compromised my ability to identify with many of the actions and ultimate decisions of its characters – and it wasn’t just because they’re white and I’m not. Vital character building blocks are missing.

Less, isn’t always more – especially when you’re talking about people – but I doubt it’s a lesson Coppola’s bothered to learn or take into consideration when deciding what or who has permission to exist in her reality.

Kudos to Coppola for choosing to re-imagine The Beguiled as a study in gender-based power dynamics but it’s nowhere near as powerful or meaningful as it could’ve been.

Overall Rating: 2.75 out of 5

Originally posted on Pop Culture Geeks

Now Watching: The Beguiled Quick Take: Set against a haunting and ethereal backdrop of Southern Gothic beauty, with plumes of smoke and echoes of cannon fire in the distance; Coppola’s macabre, darkly sensual drama plays out within the walls of an antebellum homestead and is the brutally winding tale about the consequences of f*king with the wrong set of females.

#Movie Review #Southern Gothic

[ryanmeft]

The Beguiled Movie Review

The Beguiled is a simple movie at first glance, a thriller focused on a very tiny story within a very big war. Those who saw the original, which I know only through plot descriptions, may wonder why it needed to be remade. The element that updates Sofia Coppola's version is that here, the man is not a hero, possibly not a villain, and the women are not antagonists, yet also possibly not heroes. All are interesting, bearing many layers. The third act trails off into the realm of standard thriller showdowns, but the build-up is wonderfully tense.

The soldier is found in the woods while cannon blasts can be heard from, well, somewhere. The young girl who finds him thinks she has, basically, a wounded bird on her hands. She takes him back to a school for women which has been mostly abandoned by 1864, as the Civil War grinds down to a bloody end. He's a Yankee, a fact the various women take differently. The headmistress, Miss Farnsworth, reacts cooly, dressing his wounds. Edwina, an aging spinstress, couldn't care less; she sees a way to escape. Alicia, new to early womanhood, licks her lips; the soldier is quite a specimen. Jane, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, reacts forcefully to his being from the north, but her attitude has the flavor of pulling someone's hair in class. All are quite disrupted by him: though both Yankees and their own Confederate men regularly pass the school, the soldier is the war brought home.

The film is a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood-starring potboiler, though instead of a salacious paperback-novel vibe, Coppola's version focuses more on sexual tension and the games of manipulation people play. Colin Farrell is the soldier, named McBurney, and by all appearances he spends most of the film as a perfect houseguest: he repairs the dilapidated garden, is a friend to the younger girls, and participates in dinner and music. He is, however, a man, and three of the women in the house are old enough to notice that quite readily. Here's the change: I have not had the opportunity to see the original, but I get the impression from reading about it that Eastwood's character was portrayed as ultimately the primary victim. Here, he is polite to Miss Farnsworth, but as she leaves he seems almost to lick his lips. He professes love to the lonely and despairing Edwina, only to sneak to the room of the young and seductive Alicia.

You could argue he has no obligation to not leverage his advantages as a disruptive man in their lives, and you'd be right. The women are not, it must be noted, completely innocent, though most of their errors are failings of judgment rather than active transgressions. The cast has been chosen to expertly bring out all the divisions, both in the school as a whole and in their individual characters. Miss Farnsworth is played by Nicole Kidman, who may be mostly known for playing fairly heroic characters but, as seen in her breakthrough film To Die For, has an edge in her. She decides not to let McBurney die out of Christian charity, but only after being mildly reprimanded by one of the children. Perhaps crucially, her adherence to her religious views helps McBurney in his seductions, as she insists that a blossoming young woman should care only about her studies in an isolated school despite the fact that she, having once been married, feels the same urges. It is partially a result of the times she lives in, but there's little doubt her denial of her girls' womanhoods is something McBurney takes advantage of. I may, also, have gotten her character all wrong; I found her fascinating and will be thinking her over for a while.

Then there are Edwina and Alicia, who are opposite ends of the spectrum. Kirsten Dunst is essentially tasked with playing a woman who is not supposed to be very appealing to a shallow fellow like McBurney; she has to make Edwina a woman of fading beauty who can easily fall for the patter of such a huckster. She has, and always has had, a unique charm that she has to tamp back here. Edwina knows how to impart school lessons but isn't very smart in the ways of the world, and she's the biggest victim among all the characters. There is a scene of violent sex between Dunst and Farrell that, while technically consensual, is made uncomfortable by the fact that Edwina has clearly been taken in by him. I'm used to Dunst playing more aggressive women, so this role is brave for her.

Then there's Elle Fanning as Alicia, a teenager new to her impulses who doesn't seem to yet grasp the damage that her games of seduction and manipulation cause. Similar characters Fanning played in 20th Century Women and Neon Demon were more complex, but they were also living in a time when that was possible. By comparison, how much blame can Alicia bear, when she is living in a 19-century world that denies her any expression of her femininity or independence? Getting what she wants through manipulation is, essentially, the only tool left to a smart woman at the time. Whereas Edwina may have been such a girl once, she seems to have been ground down by societal reality. Alicia is, perhaps, her, 15 years earlier. Talented young actresses Oona Laurence and Angourie Rice don't have much of a role in the plot, but they succeed in that their characters lack pure childlike innocence. They don't yet understand why they are drawn to the mysterious soldier, but they are, giggling as he passes like schoolgirls.

The school in which this takes place feels like a place almost out of myth. Situated near the fighting but also away from it, it is one of those places you might stumble upon by accident, like the Beast's castle. I doubt this movie could have believably taken place in the industrialized north with the same impact; for better or worse, the old south has taken on a reputation in America as a place where strange things could happen. The visual richness of the setting evokes a bit of a House of Usher vibe. The film misses a major opportunity for further complexity, however, by omitting any and all mention of slavery. I am told the original had a slave character, and I wonder how much more of a tangled web would have been woven if the women at the school, while feeling put upon by McBurney's presence, also owned a human being. I suspect this was done to make the women more sympathetic, but it comes close to making this version of the south feel like a fairy tale land rather than a historical place. We must essentially sympathize with the woman while ignoring the fact that at least some of them are likely supporters of keeping black people in involuntary bondage.

Then there is that ending. I won't give it away, but a major character has such a sudden shift in personality in order to justify it that I found it hard to believe the reason for that shift. Coppola's point seems to be that women can do just fine without the disruptive influence of men, and I agree, but the way the film makes this point strips it of the complexity it has so carefully built. Verdict: Recommended Note: I don’t use stars but here are my possible verdicts. I suppose you could consider each one as adding a star. Must-See Highly Recommended Recommended Average Not Recommended Avoid like the Plague You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/ Or his very infrequent tweets here: https://twitter.com/RyanmEft All images are property of the people what own the movie.

#angourie rice #nicole kidman #kirsten dunst #elle fanning #oona laurence #sofia coppola #Clint Eastwood #edgar allan poe #20th century women #civil war #neon demon #the beguiled #beauty and the beast