The Virgin Suicides

Released 1999
Stars James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Hanna Hall, Chelsea Swain, A.J. Cook, Leslie Hayman, Danny DeVito, Scott Glenn
Directed by Sofia Coppola

There is a time in the adolescent season of every boy when a particular girl seems to have materialized in his dreams, with backlighting from heaven. Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" is narrated by an adult who speaks for "we"--for all the boys in a Michigan suburban neighborhood 25 years ago, who loved and lusted after the Lisbon girls. We know from the title and the opening words that the girls killed themselves. Most of the reviews have focused on the girls. They miss the other subject--the gawky, insecure yearning of the boys.

The movie is as much about those guys, "we," as about the Lisbon girls. About how Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the leader of the pack, loses his baby fat and shoots up into a junior stud who is blindsided by sex and beauty, and dazzled by Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst), who of the perfect Lisbon girls is the most perfect.

The story it most reminds me of, indeed, is "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975), about a party of young girls, not unlike the Lisbon sisters in appearance and sexual experience, who go for a school outing one day and disappear into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Were they captured? Killed in a fall? Trapped somehow? Bitten by snakes? Simply lost in the maze of nature? What happened to them is not the point. Their disappearance is the point. One moment they were smiling and bowing in their white dresses in the sun, and the next they were gone forever. The lack of any explanation is the whole point: For those left behind, they are preserved forever in the perfection they possessed when they were last seen.

"The Virgin Suicides" is Sofia Coppola's first film, based on the much-discussed novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. She has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn't hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy. 

Summary from Roger Ebert

I was happy to see Roger compare "The Virgin Suicides" to "Picnic at Hanging Rock" because that was the movie I had in mind while watching this one. They both deal with teenage girls inexplicably snatched from life and, more importantly, the loss felt by those left behind. I think this movie worked even better than "Picnic," because of its tone. It laid out the events before they happened and led us slowly and inexorably to them. We knew what was coming, and it wasn't important why. The important thing was the sense of loss that haunted the boys and everyone else for the rest of their lives. 

Also, you can't go wrong with a flick that has 4 KISS references: 3 album covers and a KISS Army t-shirt. The best (or worst) moment was when the mother forced Lux to burn her records, and we watched her drop "Hotter than Hell" on the fire... --Bill Alward, September 30, 2001