12/7/17
The directorial debut of Sofia Coppola came in 1999 in the form of an adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides hypnotically enthralling book “The Virgin Suicides”. The daughter of famed director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia made a less than stellar acting debut in her father's Godfather: Part III in the early 90s. Her immense talents in directing are definitely where she belongs and it all started with this film.
The Lisbon sisters, Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese live in a modest suburban Detroit neighborhood. Their mystical beauty casts a spell over the neighbor boys that last a lifetime. The mystery and legend of the girls only deepen as they all end up taking their own lives. Born too strict religious parents played by James Woods and Kathleen Turner, the girls live a sheltered life and their noose of freedom is always getting tighter and tighter. The film is told through the memories of the neighbor boys who spend their days imagining what the girls must be like.
The youngest of the girls, Cecilia (Hanna Hall), gets things started by surviving a suicide attempt. Her lost and melancholic face always seems to be somewhere else. Like the film itself, it lives in this dreamy sort of limbo between life and death. After getting advice from counselors the Lisbon parents agree to throw a party so the girls can socialize with boys. This ends as bad as a party possibly can as Cecilia finishes what she started by killing herself.
Lux (Kirsten Dunst), the second oldest at 14 is by far the most outgoing and adventurous of the girls. She is pursued by the coolest guy in school Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). She plays hard to get but Trip is persistent and eventually wins her over with their relationship culminating at the homecoming dance. Ignoring her curfew and other sisters she gives it all up for Trip as they spend the night on the football field. Waking up alone, Lux returns home to a new level of restraint. Her infuriated parents take the girls out of school and their bedroom becomes their prison. Lux devolves into the town slut as the boys watch her sneak out to be with a new guy just about every night. The girls eventually reach out to the guys and they communicate their feelings over the phone by playing records back and forth. The girls finally decide they want out and the guys agree to take them anywhere they want, but their way out is more drastic than anyone could have imagined.
As I mentioned before Coppola injects a dreamy, otherworldly quality to every aspect of the film. Being set in the 1970s reinforces this, from the clothing and music and performance of the actors. Although I would have liked to have known more about the other sisters, the five of them all seem to act like one. The ultimate question of why the girls kill themselves remains a mystery, even as the guys vividly recall the events some 20 years later. For Coppola “The Virgin Suicides” was only a precursor to her hit 2003 film “Lost in Translation” which brought her several awards and accolades.