THe virgin suicides

8/10  - Directed by Sofia Coppola - 1999 - 97 minutes

The gap between and adolescent’s world and reality is vast; in The Virgin Suicides, it’s deadly. The Virgin Suicides is the elusive “great directorial debut” that launched the career of venerated director Sophia Coppola. And ultimately what would make her first feature so triumphant was that in spite of it being her first film on the big screen, Coppola’s inspiration for the movie (Jeffery Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, 1993) was a story with substance and relevance. It may surprise you, but this film contains suicide. More specifically it revolves around the suicide of five girls in an uneventful and wealthy suburb in Michigan, following the girls’ lives from the youngest sister, Cecelia’s first suicide attempt to the death of the four older girls largely told through the eyes of the unnamed boys in neighborhood who become entranced with the sisters. It features an impressive cast, starring James Woods and Kathleen Turner as the overprotective parents of the Lisbon sisters, played by Kirstin Dunst, A.J. Cook, Hanna R Hall, Leslie Hayman and Chelsie Swain as Lux, Mary, Cecilia, Therese, and Bonnie, respectively. 

With soft pastel aesthetics and dreamy cinematography, Coppola pierces the idyllic magic of upper middle class American childhood. Looking through the lens of picturesque beauty makes the unsettlingly dark tale feel like a twisted memory of adolescence you’ve repressed. The benefit of the narration being the neighborhood boys but being shown images inside the Lisbon family is feeling the barrier between the fantasy of the boys and the reality of the Lisbon sisters. Ultimately, it’s this barrier between fantasy and reality that kills the sisters. To th   e boys, the Lisbon sisters are not individuals. They represent the fantastical unattainability and beauty the boys desire, something completely removed from their real lives. At its core, this belief in some romantic vision of the girls is itself a result of the parents, Mr and Mrs Lisbon, and their delusional dream for daughters who are “innocent” and “pure.” This controlling and absurd fantasy isolates the girls from any forming of connections with boys. The film is set in a place where the boys in town and the Lisbon sisters live in different worlds and where, for the boys, the girls are mysteries to be solved before they are people. When Trip Fontaine persuades Mr and Mrs Lisbon to allow him and some friends to take the four remaining girls to homecoming and later has sex with Lux, we see his delusion being shattered. Trip realizes on the football field that he had "sullied" his fantastical perception of Lux, that she was no longer the myth that he had dreamed of. Suicide is the final act of defiance of the Lisbon sisters, as the condition of their lives makes death the only choice they can make for themselves.

The hazy, dreamlike execution makes The Virgin Suicides no less uncomfortably real. As the boys, years after, grapple with the mystery of the girls suicide, the viewer is compelled to consider childhood and the sexist social dysfunction that has ultimately pervaded American society. An excellent marriage of beautiful visuals and a deeply thought provoking story, The Virgin Suicides will, if nothing else, greatly unsettle you and your view of adolescence.